Exhuma was more interesting than entertaining, if that makes sense. I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure I’d watch it again. It meandered quite a bit, and I didn’t totally understand all the finer plot details; something about ancestral curses and Japanese occupation and vengeful spirits buried vertically in the ground. But what I really loved was the world it created: this whole network of esoteric service providers working together. Shamans, geomancers, morticians, feng shui experts, all treating the supernatural as casually as plumbers treat leaky pipes. They’re professionals with specialties and billable hours and inside jokes.

The film follows renowned shaman Hwa-rim and her protégé Bong-gil as a wealthy Korean-American family hires them to lift a curse afflicting their newborn son. They trace the problem back to an ancestor’s grave in Korea and bring in geomancer Kim Sang-deok and mortician Yeong-geun to help with the exhumation. What starts as a straightforward curse-lifting gig spirals into something much darker when they discover there’s more buried at that gravesite than they expected.

The friendships between these four characters are the heart of the film. They bicker about money, joke around between rituals, worry about each other when things go wrong. Sang-deok tastes dirt from graves to assess them, which is both gross and sort of funny. Yeong-geun cracks jokes to lighten the mood. They feel like a found family of supernatural professionals who’ve worked together long enough to have real affection for each other. When things get dangerous, you genuinely care whether they survive.

The film is divided into two distinct halves, and I’m still not entirely sure how they connect. The first part deals with the Park family’s ancestral curse—pretty straightforward ghost story territory with creepy possession scenes and elaborate shamanic rituals. Then they discover a second coffin buried vertically beneath the first one, and suddenly we’re dealing with Japanese spirits from the occupation era and historical trauma manifesting as supernatural revenge. It’s maybe too ambitious, and I found myself a bit lost in the mythology. But being lost in a completely unfamiliar belief system was part of what made it fascinating.

The humor is subtle and low-key, which I appreciated. There’s a moment where the three main characters are driving up the mountain to confront the spirit, and they get stopped at a roadblock. A government worker warns them about a bear rampaging the countryside. They all turn to face him, and their faces are covered in calligraphic Buddhist scripture tattoos meant to protect them. The worker is completely taken aback, flabbergasted, and in the car they’re scrambling for an excuse about why they absolutely must proceed down this dangerous road. It’s a small moment, but it made me giggle.

Being immersed in Korean shamanism, feng shui, Buddhist practices, Japanese folklore, all of it so completely different from Western horror traditions, was maybe my favorite part. The rituals are elaborate and beautiful: Hwa-rim dancing with ceremonial blades while Bong-gil drums, pig sacrifices offered to appease spirits, the careful attention to where and how bodies are buried. It’s all taken completely seriously by everyone involved, no skepticism, no characters rolling their eyes at superstition. In this world, the supernatural is just real, and there are professionals who handle it.

The film is gorgeous to look at, with misty mountains, elaborate costumes, and the way spirits manifest as streaking fireballs across night skies. When the big reveal happens in the second half,  it’s visually striking even if it’s a bit ridiculous. The ambition of trying to blend historical trauma with monster movie spectacle is worth something, even if it doesn’t entirely work.

But…I think Exhuma suffers from trying to do too much. The plot gets convoluted, the tonal shifts are jarring, and by the end, I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d just watched. But I was never bored. The characters felt real and true, the cultural immersion was fascinating, and those small moments of humor grounded the weirdness. I think it’s worth watching if you’re interested in folk horror that doesn’t follow Western templates, or if you want to see a horror film that takes its supernatural elements completely seriously while still finding room for friendship and occasional levity.

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