Writer-director Jang Jae-hyun obtained a funeral director’s license to ensure his latest work, Exhuma, properly portrayed the intricacies of the burial process, while concurrently ensuring an accurate portrayal of shamanism in Korean culture. With his 2015 feature length debut The Priests, 2019’s Svaha: The Sixth Finger, and now this latest picture (his best thus far), Jae-hyun Jang has proven himself one of the most inventive filmmakers of modern Korean cinema. Expertly combining elements of mystery and horror, the film holds its chilling atmosphere while keeping a tight grip on character and story. Jang takes care in setting up the supernatural elements, meticulously unspooling the mystery of his tale.

Exhuma is broken up into six chapters. Using this approach to great effect, Jang Jae-hyun immerses his audience in a unique cinematic kaleidoscope of Korean mystical and spiritual culture that permeates through a riveting and emotional motion picture.

In Los Angeles, a wealthy Korean family fears they have been plagued with a curse; one that is endangering the life of the oldest son’s new-born baby. The family consults South Korean shaman Hwarim (Kim Go-eun). Traveling to the United States with her apprentice Bong Gil (Lee Do-hyun), Hwarim discovers the family may have been targeted by the spirit of a departed ancestor. Returning to Korea, Hwarim and Bong Gil team with geomancer Kim Sang Deok (the great Choi Min-sik) and his colleague, an undertaker named Ko Yung Geon (Yoo Hae-jin) to investigate further.

Traveling to the grave of the cursed family’s ancestors, the team finds it located on a land breathing with bad energy, Kim advises they all halt their investigation, as the evil could find its way into their lives. Putting their hearts and focus on the endangered baby gives all four the courage to continue. Together they exhume the coffin, cremating the remains in the hope of ridding the family of the dark entity that surrounds them, but there is another more sinister spirit deep within the grave. When it is released, the family and the four truth seekers stand at the door of a dark fate.

Jang Jae-hyun’s screenplay finds symmetry in the relationships between mysticism and reality; the framework of the supernatural forming an intense bond with the human drama. The character arcs hit on relatable levels while scenes of dread and paralyzing fright become quite effective. The film’s tempered direction and patient camera find a Zen-like fluidity that successfully finds that elusive connection of the physical and the spiritual. The director clearly has great knowledge of (and respect for) Korean shamanism and uses the rituals as an important part of the story, almost presenting them as another character. The focus on detail gives these scenes a realistic tone that uses them for the good of the narrative, rather than exploitation.

This is an ambitious film that blends human drama and ghostly terror with an examination into the country’s traumatic past and the real world horrors that weigh heavily on today’s divided Korea; their sordid pre and post world war II relations with Japan becoming a powerfully disturbing symbol of the historical subtext that gives the film its weight.