Exhuma

South Korea at its BEST! Korea has mastered most of the film subgenres on a world level, only with horror it's not quite the top yet, but for me this is probably the best Korean horror I've ever seen (sure top 10 this year!). It's a film that wins the viewer over right from the start, it downright grabs you by the balls and doesn't let go, it's very important to get the viewers attention very early on and not lose it once throughout the film. Exhuma has a very original premise. A very wealthy family is plagued by a series of paranormal phenomena and they call in two experienced shamans to help them. They discover that the curse can be broken by moving their ancestor's grave, and they enlist the help of a seasoned Korean veteran, Min-sik Choi, the ultimate expert at the job. But from the start, something doesn't sit right with him. The ground is cursed, foxes are swarming everywhere, the smell of death is in the air, and as it turns out digging up the old coffin will have fatal consequences. It is a genre masterpiece in terms of direction and execution, indeed the whole film looks magnificent, it has very good dialogue, great acting, a well thought out plot with no shortage of interesting twists and turns, in short a very ambitious spectacle that is certainly not common in horror films. What rises from the grave is downright AWESOME!!! (One of the best villains in horror in a long time!). The connection to Japanese history is simply magnificent. Surprisingly, the film is also very well paced, it goes from one atmospherically scary scene to another, the whole thing is spiced up with Korean folklore, local curses, mysticism and rituals (the ritual with the pigs was really amazing), I read that they called in real shamans to make the ritual as authentic as possible!! An unbelievable blast, which sweeps you away with visuals, atmosphere, plot, twists, actors and the concept. I enjoyed it immensely. 9/10. (05/04/2024)

What starts as a very slow genre film demanding a patient viewer, with a very likeable sinister atmosphere, turns into a sequence of authentically scary scenes just before the halfway point. I enjoyed it. But then one plotline climaxes and the story takes a bit of a turn, and you suddenly realise that you are watching something more ambitious and sweeping than you had initially thought. And at that moment you regrets watching it with not very good English subtitles, because you get a bit lost in it :D So my advice at the moment is to wait for better language support, I'll definitely watch it again then to catch some details. Still, I suspect there hasn't been a better Asian horror film of this calibre since The Wailing. (04/24/2024)