[Movie Review] “Exhuma” – When shaman culture and folk religion revive the cinema

Despite the challenge of exploiting shamanic material in the horror and mystery genre, which is considered a double-edged sword, Exhuma still has an impressive opening performance.

Exhuma entered the field with impressive results.

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Exhuma follows a group of four people including feng shui master Kim Sang Deok (Choi Min Sik), mourner Yeong Geun (Yoo Hae Jin) and two exorcists Hwa Rim (Kim Go Eun), Yoon.

Exhuma is divided into six main chapters, each chapter’s title is taken from terms in Shamanism, including `yin and yang five elements`, `unnamed grave`, `soul`, `moving earth`.

The film follows a group of `grave robbers` of four people.

The film inherits the mise-en-scène technique that the director has delicately shown in previous films, adding spiritual stories.

The plot has mystical elements, rich in Asian culture.

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However, the problem when telling a story is by separating it into different chapters in an omnibus format (containing many sections), forcing the content of each chapter and the overall probability of even distribution to be reasonable.

If in the first act to the middle of the second act, viewers can easily recognize the villain as a Korean ghost seeking revenge on his descendants, then after the second act to the end of the film, the villain becomes quite ambiguous.

In addition, despite the film’s genre, the real horror element is only shown briefly in the `jumpscare` scenes.

Fascinating but greedy for content makes the movie quite chaotic at times.

By combining a group of four people from three successive generations, with distinct personalities, destinies and influenced in their own ways by history facing the tomb, it partly shows the attitude

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The term `Exhuma` (or Pamyo in Korean) here not only refers to the physical process of moving the body or grave of the deceased, but also reveals the conflicts and complex relationships between the characters.

The film shows a lot of effort to show surreal scenes of Korean Shamanism, such as the traditional digging process and rituals to appease the spirits, and how feng shui masters do their work.

The atmosphere was extremely creepy with religious rituals.

Possessing a layered plot, details layered upon details, historical anecdotes, Buddhist symbols, animism… the film has successfully built a modern fantasy world with an atmosphere imbued with a Western feel.

In the film, the characters’ names are also taken from the names of independence activists who fought against Japan.

In addition, contrary to the superficial image of this genre, the real message that the film wants to send to the audience is the eradication of both visible and invisible remnants of Japanese colonialism and the cultivation of Japanese colonialism.

Exhuma combines many different elements such as history, politics, nationalism…

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Exhuma also caused many mixed reactions when it was said that this was a film with anti-Japanese ideology.

Many opinions defend that the film does not have an `anti-Japanese` or `anti-Japanese` policy, but is only a criticism of Japan in the past when it tried to invade the whole world through calling for the Greater Commonwealth.

Overall, Exhuma is still a movie worthy of being released in theaters with a satisfying look, solid acting, and maintaining the dramatic rhythm throughout in addition to an effective humorous element.