“Exhuma” is a 2024 Korean drama film, categorized as Horror, Folk Horror, Thriller, Occult Thriller, Mystery, Supernatural or Fantasy, and available for rent on Amazon Prime and Viki.
SUMMARY: In “Exhuma”, a family has been cursed ever since one of their ancestors betrayed the Japanese army during their occupation in Korea. Since that time, the first-born of every generation has been cursed with a supernatural illness. The family member lives in the United States. But moving to another country did not stop his infant child from becoming ill. A shaman is hired to remove the curse. However, the shaman traces the curse to the family’s ancestral grave in South Korea. She works with her protégé, a geomancer, and a mortician. Together they don’t just dig up the family’s ancestral grave but also uncover a dark secret that is linked to the burial site. The foursome are hoping to they can eliminate the curse once and for all.
♦ The Curse of the First-born | Can It Be Removed?
In “Exhuma”, as if the Japanese occupation of Korea during the colonial period was not traumatizing enough, a family has been cursed ever since. The grandfather of the family was a traitor to the Japanese army and as a result, the first-born in the family have been cursed. The occupation ended in 1945. That’s a long time!
Park Ji-yong is a very wealthy man who is Korean but lives in Los Angeles, California USA. Can money buy anything? He sure hopes so. That’s why he called for a shaman ~ Shaman Hwa-rim ~ and her protégé ~ Bong-gil ~ to come all the way to America. His infant son is suffering from a supernatural illness that doctors and modern medicine simply can not cure. When have doctors ever been able to cure curses? Doctors deal in the physical realm.
- Curses are all about other-worldly powers and spirits who are in the earthly realm but are not bound by the earthly realm.
- Curses are beyond the control of humans unless those humans have powers that allow them to connect, confront, and possibly overpower the spirits and eliminate the curse.
Once in the USA, Hwa-rim discovers that the curse traces all the way back to South Korea. So the shaman team must return and when they get there, they ask for assistance from two other people: Sang-deok who is a geomancer and Young-geun who is a mortician. Shamans supposedly have special powers to communicate with spirits, cure illnesses, and predict the future. But this time there’s a gravesite involved which is very likely the source of the curse, so Hwa-rim feels the need to get help from someone who can read the earth (so to speak). Geomancy is an ancient form of divination that interprets patterns on the ground. Usually, the geomancer creates patterns by casting handfuls of earth or drawing lines and dots and then interprets them. Why a mortician? Uuhh … morticians deal with dead people. They don’t have special powers, but surely they have some kind of expertise that would be useful to a shaman in this particular situation. (??)
Will this foursome be able to lift the curse?
Main Characters:
- Shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun, “Little Women“, “The King: Eternal Monarch“)
- Shaman’s protégé Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun, “The Good Bad Mother“, “The Glory“)
- Geomancer Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik, “Big Bet 1 and 2“)
- Mortician Young-geun (Yoo Hae-jin, “The Night Owl“)
Viewership and Ratings:
- IMDb Rating: 6.9 out of 10 stars
- My Drama List: 7.5 out of 10 stars
My personal rating is 8 out of 10 stars.
This movie gets 8 stars which should all go toward giving credit to the person in charge of putting together such a fabulous group of actors and actresses who made such an unbelievable story believable.
Do you like Korean horror movies and TV series and/or enjoy content that includes shamans, and other people who claim they can communicate with the dead or with spirits and figure out how to make them go away and leave the living alone? They’ve already lived. Why do they have to hang around and terrorize people who are still alive? It’s not right. It would be different if they were invited. But most of the time they are uninvited guests! The people who remain alive on earth have enough evil disruptions in their lives from other people who are living. Why do they have to deal with dead people and evil spirits too?! Just sayin’.
LINKS OF INTEREST:
Occult thriller ‘Exhuma’ becomes 1st film to top 10 mil. in admissions in 2024 | The Korea Times
Exhuma ?? (2024): A Deep Dive into South Korea’s Latest Horror Masterpiece | TBM Horror
Review: “Exhuma,” a horror movie that evokes Korean patriotism | HS Insider
TRAILER/TEASER:
EonTalk. “Exhuma (2024) 파묘 Movie Trailer | EONTALK.” YouTube Video. YouTube, January 9, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8k-gfA08c.
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Similar Kdramas, If You Like “Exhuma”:
The Bequeathed (2024) – In this 2024 Korean drama series, a woman inherits the family’s gravesite from an uncle she didn’t even know she had. Unfortunately, like most families, you only discover that you have other relatives, in addition to your dead uncle, because they show up and claim that you’ve inherited something they should have rightfully inherited. This Occult Thriller, is based on the webtoon of the same name.
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