Anyone who believe that just because I've watched all the Omen movies — including the laughable made-for-TV fourquel, the 2024 prequel, and the 2016 series Damien — means I'm a sucker for most movies involving demon possession would be... 100% correct. And so when my boyfriend asked me what Korean movie I wanted to watch next, once Exhuma had been presented as an option, I was deaf to every other candidate, awards be damned. Director-writer Jang Jae-hyun apparently shares my obsession: His 2015 fright flick The Priests concerns two holymen investigate a potential demonic assault; his 2019 follow-up concerns a cult tied to serial murders.
With Exhuma, the horror auteur largely ditches Christianity for homegrown shamanism to great effect. Choi Min-sik plays a geomancer enlisted by a matrilineal shaman (Kim Go-eun) to exorcise a familial spirit whose tormenting his descendants, across the Pacific and across three generations (including the newborn heir). The feng shui of burial gets complicated when these two and their two wingmen (Yoo Hae-jin and Lee Do-hyun) unearth a casket too big for a human and wrapped in barbed wire. What happens next? Hell breaks loose — with a decidedly Japanese pedigree. And so Korea's efforts to get Japanese to leave them alone now extends to the spirit world too.
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