This article contains spoilers for the film Exhuma.

Exhuma brings experts of all colors to the epicenter in Korea. Shaman Lee Hwa-rim (played by Kim Go-eun) and her student, the apprentice shaman Yoon Bong-gil (played by Lee Do-hyun), take off to Los Angeles on official business after receiving “a referral from a doctor” they know. Their meeting with their “filthy rich” client, Park Ji-yong (played by Kim Jae Chul), has occult written all over it: Here’s a man who, having fruitlessly thrown a sizeable fortune at hospital bills to try and save his newborn son from an undiagnosable illness, now places his bets on mystical and supernatural phenomena, or practices rooted in them, that can’t be explained by science. But Hwa-rim detects something in the pale Park that goes beyond a father’s love—something far more sinister. She correctly deduces that an unidentifiable condition is being passed down through Park’s family, diagnosing, in no uncertain terms, that “one of” their “ancestors is going berserk because they can’t find peace in” their “resting place.” The miraculous Hwa-rim, her ever-present partner Bong-gil, the feng shui expert with 40 years’ experience in geomancy Kim Sang-duk (played by Choi Min-sik), and the undertaker Ko Young-geun (played by Yoo Hai-jin)—who performs presidential embalming—come together for a job: exhume and reinter the deceased and pocket 500 million won each. This fee fit for four professionals of their level leads them to a grave on the top of a mountain that’s teeming with foxes, but seeing this lone, north-facing unmarked grave, Sang-duk quickly sees it’s in “the absolutely most wicked of the wicked” places and decides he’s going to wash his hands of the whole thing. But, after Park persuades him to stay with a plea to save his sick child, Sang-duk, though he’s fully dedicated to living his life in line with the principles of the five elements, concludes that geomancy and humanity don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Seeing that “even one improperly disturbed grave” could lead to a “wave of deaths,” he takes the proper relocation of the deceased as synonymous with providing hope for a sick child. With Hwa-rim’s decision, the team decides to hold the reinterment alongside a ritual (one invented for the film but based on the real tasal-gut involving a sacrificial pig or cow). With that, they set off on the task at hand, each of them following their own “theories” in the “tiger’s back,” or the Korean “peninsula’s backbone.”

Director Jang Jae-hyun boils Exhuma down to a balancing act between the weight of the story and the interplay between its characters. The world of the movie was carefully crafted according to the film’s intentions as early as when writing the screenplay, with focus placed on being “realistic” and “intuitive” and the film combining East Asian shamanistic practices and Korea’s history with Japanese colonialism. Moments like how Hwa-rim introduces herself in the opening as a shaman “between light and darkness, science and superstition,” and the eerie scene where it’s revealed there’s a second coffin hiding below the first, make for a satisfying genre film beyond compare. Exhuma, as the very title suggests, fills its scenes with characters who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Together, the shamans, the geomancer, and the undertaker unearth what’s been buried and make sure everything’s in order—all because of “something” only they can see or feel, and all according to their own principles. As professionals who are at the same time intimately familiar with the deceased, they’re also scammers in cahoots with death. Whether revered or reviled, these masters of eradication move forward by moving back. Joining the four leads who bend over backwards to unearth the past are Hwa-rim’s fellow shamans Ok Gwang-sim (played by Kim Sunyoung) and Park Ja-hye (played by Kim Jian), both given the names of real independence activists in Korean history. Exhuma highlights the great pains that are taken to set up the smokescreen shrouding not just the coffin but the spirit of Park’s ancestor: a Japanese collaborator who “sold his country away.” Removing the “vicious” things—the eight-foot Japanese oni stakes driven into the ground across Korea—and reclaiming the land forms the true backbone of the story.

When Sang-duk speaks of “this land on which our descendants will live,” it isn’t an abrupt nationalist message, but rather a reminder that even before the geomancer realizes it, he—along with shamans Hwa-rim and Bong-gil, as well as undertaker Young-geun—is a descendant of the land himself. As one such descendant, Sang-duk has inherited the tools of the Cheolhyeoldan (Union of Iron and Blood) that sought to remove the metal stakes Japan had driven in all throughout the Korean peninsula with the goal of extinguishing its life force. And, in the climax, when his knowledge and experience lead him to the conclusion that “the polar opposite of burning metal is wet wood,” it feels profoundly personal to him. Given their displays of personal prowess manifest as a collective cause, the slickly charming Hwa-rim and Bong-gil serve as the film’s lubricant. The pair seems to be more than just master and apprentice—they’re one other’s “closest ally.” Actor Lee Do-hyun says he paid “special attention” to the idea that his character, Bong-gil, would “listen closely to his mentor, Hwa-rim.” Ruling out a love story between the two characters this way actually causes their relationship to be that much more distinct.

This shaman who takes off her LEMAIRE’s and puts on white Converses for rituals, and the other tattooed with protective spells all over his body, wearing a G-SHOCK watch and Bang & Olufsen headphones, turn their keen eye for “something” toward themselves as well. As they perform their ritual, Hwa-rim cuts her cheek and thigh with a knife and reaches into a fire with her bare hands to smear ash on her face, and Bong-gil cries out incantations as he bangs a drum, together bringing the spirit of tradition in line with the rhythm of modern times. The nonchalance these self-assured characters exude signals at more than just being hip—the spirit-summoning shaman and the apprentice who readily receives it put themselves on the line in the name of warding off malevolence. When the spirit says it will “take my children with me,” Hwa-rim stands there looking like the perfect guardian angel, not even batting an eyelid as she simply responds, “I won’t let that happen.” With its utterly unambiguous characterization and use of Korean folklore, Exhuma, released February 22, sold over 850,000 tickets on the March 1 holiday alone, and continues to draw tens of thousands more, even on weekdays. According to the Korean Film Council, ticket sales for the movie had surpassed seven million by March 8, showing unstoppable momentum, breaking records for films centered around the occult, and demonstrating the true nature of the occult in Korea in 2024.

“Juniper coffins reserved for royalty” and the daimyo who became “a god by cutting down tens of thousands of people” symbolize power seized by violent means. Even when the good guys reveal the true nature of underhanded and traitorous people high on the self-veneration of extortion, there’s no way to lift the “viscous” shadow that hangs heavy over life as we live it. History has a continuous effect on the present; the past will never not be there. It leaves a permanent mark that can never be undone or denied. Exhuma follows a path that must “deviate from the course,” arriving at the precise coordinates along the “tiger’s back.” By being so specific, the film appears to be breaking away completely from the traditional trappings of films about the occult, but in another sense, it’s really about taking that and putting new flesh on it. “Spirits and ghosts are incomplete beings, with a soul but no physical form,” Hwa-rim tells Sang-duk before they come face to face with the daimyo. “They can never overpower the will of a human, who has both their soul and their flesh.” Such intense digging is enough to push a person to the brink of exhaustion, but all that effort to root out corruption is rewarded with an equal measure of freedom. Unbending in its execution, Exhuma sets out to become an auspicious spirit possessed of both soul and flesh that can pluck out the malevolent stakes that poison the ground.