Back in 2016, South Korean director Na Hong-Jin unleashed
his downright mean horror movie The Wailing on the unsuspecting film
world. A kind of neo-noir thriller that
gradually develops into a supernatural horror film including but not limited to
Shamanism, Japanese demonic forces, zombies and a sense of vastness where
feeble human actions seem to do little to deter the dark course of events, it
introduced a new kind of Asian horror from Seoul with an unforgiving edge and
tendency towards hysterics. Nothing
quite like it had come before.
Bleak and foreboding, it invariably paved the way for The
Priests writer-director Jae-hyun Jang’s new South Korean horror film Exhuma
starring Oldboy actor Choi Min-sik, A Muse actress Kim
Go-eun, A Taxi Driver actor Yoo Hae-jin and television star Lee
Do-hyun. Almost picking up where The
Wailing left off, the new 2024 thriller recently became the highest
grossing South Korean film of the year and is a welcome return to the occult replete
with shamanism, feng shui and a fiery entity sure to raise the hair of
filmgoers domestic and foreign.
Beginning in Los Angeles involving a Korean American family
suffering from some sort of preexisting generational curse, it is decided with
the help of a reputable Korean shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her teenage protégé
Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) to try and protect the woman’s infant child. Upon arrival, Hwa-rim discovers a ‘Grave’s
Call’ or vengeful ancestral spirit leading to contacting Korea’s top feng shui
master Kim Sang-deok (screen legend Choi Min-sik) and a local undertaker
Yeoung-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) in an effort to locate, unearth and relocate the
grave to try and appease the misaligned spirit’s needs in the hopes the
paranormal activity will disappear.
--Andrew Kotwicki