A truism about the Korean box office is that it’s mainly supported by mid-budget mainstream fare, which is a bit of a dodge because it’s often difficult to tell where mid-budget movies end and blockbusters begin. This long, incident-packed occult thriller has been a godsend in a year when Korean theatrical revenues are being sapped big time by streamers, and while its production values and special effects pale in comparison to blockbusters like The Moon (a huge dud), the cast is chock full of A-listers, thus making it a big deal by the calculus of what really matters in Korea: star power. The cast is headed by veteran leading man Choi Min-sik, as geomancer Sang-deok, whose sidekick in these supernatural goings-on is a mortician, Yeong-geun, played by Yoo Hae-jin, one of those actors who, like Song Kang-ho, has gone from character parts to a wide range of leading roles with more force than a cannonball. The female lead, a shaman named Hwa-rim, is played by one of Korea’s most formidable TV drama stars, Kim Go-eun, while Hwa-rim’s own assistant, Bong-gil, is heartthrob Lee Do-hyun. So if any movie, regardless of content or genre, is bound to draw ’em, it’s this one.

That said, Korean occult thrillers tend to not make as much sense outside of Korea. While the country’s ecumenical religious culture provides room for a wide range of faiths, the localization of the particulars of those faiths can be baffling to outsiders. The Buddhist precepts that anchor the plot of Exhuma are filigreed with lots of superstitious mumbo-jumbo that Koreans might understand instinctively but which require head-scratching leaps of logic for the rest of us. In a nutshell, a wealthy Korean family living in L.A. flies Hwa-rim and Bong-gil over from Korea to investigate the illness of the young patriarch’s newborn son, which seems to be connected to some bad dreams the patriarch is having. Hwa-rim determines that the culprit is the patriarch’s grandfather, whose spirit is uneasy in his grave back in Korea, and so they recommend exhuming the coffin and moving it to a more auspicious location, a task assigned to Sang-deok, who knows his feng shui, and Yeong-geun, who knows how to hire teams of men with shovels. The job, however, turns out to be stickier that it would seem on paper. The grave is located in a remote spot on the top of a deserted mountain with almost no markings except for some numbers that look like coordinates. Director Jang Jae-hyun gets plently of mileage out of the dried brown vegetation and the constantly overcast skies, and stages a great grave-opening ritual, complete with pig corpses and sacrificed chickens, though not as elaborately impressive as the one in The Wailing. At this point in the development, while the viewer is probably convinced that these four professionals are on the up-and-up in terms of knowing their shit, they are very much into the job for the money, and assume that this family will pay big bucks regardless of what they actually do or even achieve. So it comes off halfway a scam, especially if, like me, you find all the numerology and fixation on names and bureaucratic arcana (for reasons that seem entirely frivolous, you can’t cremate a body on a rainy day) rooted more in theater than in spirituality. But then something goes wrong when a mortuary employee unexplainedly opens the coffin before it’s reinterred, releasing something that wreaks havoc on the family and our four ghost-busters. 

Speaking of The Wailing, as in that wild and woolly horror epic, Japan’s influence over the Korean peninsula is central to the ghostly goings-on in Exhuma and only add to the thematic disorientation for those of us who didn’t grow up under such a historical shadow, but I suspect that a lot of Korean viewers will also wonder what the hell is happening once a ten-foot samurai starts walking the earth and slapping humans around. I never quite got the connection with the rich family—something to do with the grandfather’s wealth being derived from his service to Korea’s former colonizers—but in any case the plot runs off the rails several times before it settles into something that approximates stasis. The thing is, I thought The Wailing was even more ridiculous, but it was the absurd lengths to which the production went that impressed me. This is weak meat in comparison, so filled with myriad insignificant detail that I felt over-stuffed without being satisfied. 

In Korean and English. Opens Oct. 18 in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905).

Exhuma home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Showbox and Pinetown Production