Exhuma

Young shaman Hwa-rim and her partner and co-medium Bong-gil respond to a call for help from the USA, where the wealthy Park family, Korean exiles, is plagued by irritations: something is wrong with the family’s descendants and the head of the family himself is hearing screams. The duo accept the job – after all, it’s well paid – and, along with a feng shui expert and an undertaker, they start to exhume the ancestors’ grave in the north of Gangwon-do province. In the process, something escapes from the coffin, people die, others prove to be obsessed and the real problems haven’t even started yet. Jang Jae-hyun’s third feature film is a horror mystery thriller full of humour and verve, addressing issues of class, history, tradition, religion and superstition. Unfolding around the strange coffin in this odd place is an episodic series of lushly staged incantation rituals with linguistic analyses of grave lids, that relishes in cinematic effects and is carried by a great cast – besides Oldboy star Choi Min-sik as the geomancer, above all Kim Go-eun. (Berlinale)