Film: Exhuma ( Pamyo/Korean Title)
Cast: Kim Go-eun, Choi Min-sik, Lee Do-hyun, Kim Jae-cheol
Director: Jae-hyun Jang
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 134 min

Exhuma, one of the biggest hits in South Korean cinema history, comes to India in a subtitled version. The horror film which garnered Box Office success for its exploration of Korean folklore has a story that exhumes bodies from old graves in an effort to link what’s happening in the present to that of the past. Basically, it’s the Japanese annexation and occupation of Korea in the early 20th century and the resulting animosity between the two nations that gets contextualized here in a horror movie set-up. The narrative that digs deep into hidden truths in family history, gradually begins to uncover a chilling mystery.

This rather dense, ambitious and highly creative Korean occult horror has unusual characters fronting it’s unique storyline. Excavating multiple layers, a Geomancer and his team that also includes a couple of Shamans, hope to lift a dark curse and in order to do this they have to exhume a body from a mountain top grave on the border between South and North Korea.