Exhuma

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The movie in 3 sentences

• A wealthy family afflicted by a mysterious illness passed down through generations hires two young shamans, Hwa-rim and Bong-gil, who trace the curse to an ancestral grave. They enlist a veteran geomancer and an undertaker to exhume and relocate it, but what begins as an intimate family haunting soon expands into a much larger and more historically charged confrontation with a buried evil.
• The film feels somewhat like two different movies stitched together by an awkward transition. The first half plays as a grounded occult investigation, while the second suddenly shifts into a full-blown creature feature involving a supernatural Japanese warrior. The movie draws on Korea’s deeply rooted anger and trauma surrounding Japanese colonialism, but I felt this historical dimension could have been handled with greater nuance rather than turning the villain into such a literal symbol.
• I did appreciate the film’s incorporation of Korean folklore and its portrayal of shamanism, which felt chillingly realistic while remaining visually striking. I sometimes worry that popular culture can romanticize spiritual explanations at the expense of more grounded ones, but within the film, these elements added energy, texture, and a distinctive cultural identity to the story.