‘Exhuma’ Goes Digging for Massive, Enjoyable Horror Film Thrills, and It Strikes Gold

In case you ever end up burnt out on a favourite movie style popping out of Hollywood, you’d do your head and coronary heart properly to hunt examples of it elsewhere. Uninterested in the identical ol’ studio motion footage getting recycled every year? Take a look at the brutally entertaining motion movies from South Korea. Bored of what constitutes a rom-com nowadays? Go watch one from South Korea that dares swap tones on a dime from the sweetly comedic to the devastatingly unhappy and again once more. Over the boring predictability of non secular horror films steeped in Christianity? Pop in a slice of spiritually themed terror from South Korea, and put together to be caught up within the superb spectacle the place sincerity meets savagery. For these left unmoved by the most recent Exorcist cash-grab, search out Exhuma. Instantly.

Two shamens, siblings Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun), are dropped at Los Angeles to assist a household of ultra-rich Korean immigrants who consider their new child son is being focused by a supernatural menace. The pair suspect it’s an indignant calling from past the grave, and with the assistance of a geomancer and a mortician again in South Korea, they set about relocating the corpse of the household’s nice grandfather to settle his soul. Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and Younger-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) are completely satisfied to assist understanding an enormous payday awaits, however one thing feels amiss virtually as quickly because the distant earth over the useless man’s bones is disturbed.

Exhuma is an enormous, thrilling, richly detailed piece of folks horror with environment, scares, and character to spare. Author/director Jang Jae-hyun chases his two earlier movies, the spiritual horror films The Clergymen (2015) and Svaha: The Sixth Finger (2019), with a meaty style story weaving historic atrocities and supernatural beliefs into fantastical leisure. We get detailed rituals and a richly layered perception system alongside ghostly chills and monstrous decapitations, and the ensuing concoction is a enjoyable style deal with that retains on giving proper via its quite a few endings.

There’s plenty of display time to fill at over two hours, however Jang and his solid guarantee issues transfer at a gentle tempo as we ramp as much as one thing spooky or horrifying, ease again with characters we’ve come to like, after which dial it again to eleven once more. Don’t be stunned or disenchanted when the ghostly antagonist is handled barely midway via as Exhuma has one thing much more unsettling and thrilling ready within the wings — properly, within the grime, anyway — that sees the story develop in surprising methods. There’s trauma right here, pains felt by people and nation alike, however fairly than wallow in it the movie bets huge and delivers with a tangible terror that’s genuinely scary and funky on arrival.

The core ensemble solid kills it as they go toe to toe with evil, and all 4 of them deliver plain charisma and attraction to their roles. Everlasting sidekick Yoo is a dependable supply of smiles whereas Lee manages to smolder whilst he bounces from the informal to the sinister. Choi is the veteran right here, and as is all the time the case, he offers a robust, stellar efficiency as a person balancing between his beliefs and his checking account. Kim steals the present, although, as an lively younger shaman who sees her confidence shaken by what transpires. It’s a fascinating flip constructed on showmanship, respect, and actual worry. You’re going to fret about all 4 of them till the top credit hit.

Exhuma may characteristic generational trauma and terrifying acts of violence, nevertheless it’s not a heavy horror movie. There are not any emotional threads left wiggling at viewers by movie’s finish because it’s as a substitute a film trying purely to entertain. That’s to not recommend it’s disrespecting or misrepresenting the beliefs of its characters, and if something, its embrace of these very beliefs is what makes the thrills all of the extra compelling and entertaining. It’s much less The Exorcist (1973), and extra The Pope’s Exorcist (2023), and whereas that may be a turn-off for these of you fallacious within the head, it’s an excellent and welcome factor certainly.

To that time, whereas the main points of the story can really feel a bit dense at instances, the items are in place for a cause. The journey strikes viewers from the ghostly to the monstrous with which means and historical past behind the horror, and whereas there are thought-provoking components at play right here there’s additionally a want to ship huge, creepy, gory, stunning thrills. That want turns into actuality leading to style leisure that’ll go away you engorged and many happy. Horror followers basically ought to search it out, however these of you who depend your self as followers of the likes of Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing (2017) and Tetsuya Nakashima’s (nonetheless unreleased within the U.S.) It Comes (2018), run don’t stroll to Exhuma instantly. I believe you’re actually gonna dig what it’s throwin’ down.

Associated Matters: Horror

Rob Hunter has been writing for Movie Faculty Rejects since earlier than you had been born, which is bizarre seeing as he is so rattling younger. He is our Chief Movie Critic and Affiliate Editor and lists ‘Broadcast Information’ as his favourite movie of all time. Be at liberty to say hello in the event you see him on Twitter @FakeRobHunter.