Exhuma (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Exhuma (2024) – J.-H. Jang

Can I be forgiven for not recognising the lead actor from Oldboy (2003), Min-sik Choi, in the title role?  Perhaps I haven’t spent as much time with Korean cinema as I should (although I have seen Oldboy, of course, and Choi is twenty years older, after all).  In this film, Choi plays a “geomancer” who uses the principles of feng shui to recommend gravesites for wealthy clients with partner Hae-jin Yoo, who seems to be a Christian funeral director.  They sometimes work with the shaman team, Go-eun Kim and Do-hyun Lee, who get engaged to purify unclean areas or when there are unruly spirits with which to contend.  The film introduces the characters as though this was the pilot for a TV crime series and in some ways, it feels like it could very easily spin-off into an ongoing TV show.  The film itself might be broken into two episodes, with the first focused on an elderly patriarch ghost who, once accidentally released from his sealed coffin, seeks to revenge himself on the descendants who wronged him (including a baby in the USA), and the second focused on a demonic samurai ghost leftover from the Japanese occupation who protects a particular plot of land, slaying anyone who comes near, once freed. (Including a Japanese villain seems to be standard practice for Korean films, not unlike the Nazi villains who still crop up in Hollywood; not sure this is useful for world peace at this stage, but alas). The film wants to be spooky/scary, wants to be a folk horror describing Korean traditions, wants to endear us to the central team, and desires a linear plot with clear resolution (and hope for a sequel or two – or that TV series?).  It mostly succeeds but misses that magic ingredient that might elevate it further into a horror classic.  I’d tune in each week though.