‘Exhuma’ Goes Digging for Big, Fun Horror Movie Thrills, and It Strikes Gold

If 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. Tired of the identical ol’ studio motion photos getting recycled every year? Check out the brutally entertaining motion movies from South Korea. Bored of what constitutes a rom-com as of late? Go watch one from South Korea that dares change tones on a dime from the sweetly comedic to the devastatingly unhappy and again once more. Over the uninteresting predictability of non secular horror motion pictures 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. Immediately.

Two shamens, siblings Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun), are delivered to Los Angeles to assist a household of ultra-rich Korean immigrants who imagine their new child son is being focused by a supernatural risk. The pair suspect it’s an offended 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 Young-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) are completely satisfied to assist realizing 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 persona to spare. Writer/director Jang Jae-hyun chases his two earlier movies, the spiritual horror motion pictures The Priests (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 by its quite a few endings.

There’s a whole lot of display time to fill at over two hours, however Jang and his forged 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 shocked or dissatisfied when the ghostly antagonist is handled barely midway by as Exhuma has one thing much more unsettling and thrilling ready within the wings — properly, within the dust, anyway — that sees the story develop in surprising methods. There’s trauma right here, pains felt by people and nation alike, however somewhat than wallow in it the movie bets massive and delivers with a tangible terror that’s genuinely scary and funky on arrival.

The core ensemble forged kills it as they go toe to toe with evil, and all 4 of them deliver plain charisma and attraction to their roles. Eternal 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 powerful, 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 charming 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 function 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 wanting 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 could be a turn-off for these of you incorrect 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 occasions, the items are in place for a purpose. 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 need to ship massive, creepy, gory, stunning thrills. That need turns into actuality leading to style leisure that’ll go away you engorged and many glad. Horror followers on the whole ought to search it out, however these of you who rely 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 feel you’re actually gonna dig what it’s throwin’ down.

Related Topics: Horror

Rob Hunter has been writing for Film School Rejects since earlier than you had been born, which is bizarre seeing as he is so rattling younger. He’s our Chief Film Critic and Associate Editor and lists ‘Broadcast News’ as his favourite movie of all time. Feel free to say hello when you see him on Twitter @FakeRobHunter.