I started Exhuma a little too late one night and found myself hooked for its entire 134 runtime, which definitely made my morning a lot rougher than it had to be. Leave to the South Koreans to make a supernatural horror feel absolutely epic. But then again, South Korea has a history of making unusual films with long run-times.

Here are some examples.

• Like Exhuma, Park Chan-wook’s 2009 vampire tale Thirst clocked in at 134 minutes.

• 2010 brought us all 144 minutes of Kin Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil, which still stands in my mind as the definitive revenge film.

• In 2016, Na Hong-jin’s cerebral supernatural horror classic The Wailing was released. It is an impressive 156 minutes.

But having a long runtime alone is not enough to make a film feel “epic”. It also is the way they engage viewers with the story. In fact, of the list of movies I just mentioned, the film that probably feels the least epic is The Wailing even though it is the longest of the bunch. Why? Because The Wailing is much more of a slow-burn in its pacing. In fact, I’d argue Yeon Sang-ho’s zombie romp from the same year, Train to Busan, feels much more epic even though it is actually 39 minutes shorter.

Not that the term “epic” is necessarily a determinate on quality. (The Wailing is a fantastic movie.) It’s rather a comment on the amount of plot directors are able to pack into their runtime. On those terms, Exhuma definitely feels “epic”. I felt like I watched a film and its sequel all in one night.

Movies that feel “epic” are also usually able to bend or mix genres when needed, something the South Koreans have been great at for a while now. (Just think about some of the most internationally popular South Korean products. Snowpiercer, Parasite, The Squid Games. All of these products mix genres with relative ease.) These films blend in comedic moments or combine moments of action, horror or science fiction with the drama…which is something also true of a lot of Western movies that push past the two hour mark.

Exhuma is a story centered around a group of professionals hired to help Park Ji-Yong, a wealthy Korean businessman living in L.A, to put an end to the nighttime hauntings of a malevolent spirit. Park first hires Hwa-rim, (Kim Go-eun), a renown sharman and her assistant Yoon Bong Gil (Lee Do-hyun) and they quickly conclude that the screaming nightmares are coming from a long dead, but very angry, ancestor- which Park suspects to be his grandfather.

Hwa-rim knows she’ll need help to end what she calls a “Grave Calling”, so she asks Park to also hire Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-siik), a geomancer- which is basically someone who applies Feng Shui to gravesites- and his friend and expert mortician Ko Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin).The plan is to dig up Park’s grandfather and relocate him to a better plot, but Park requests that his grandfather’s remains be cremated.

Of course, complications arise. When Kim sees the grave, he becomes instantly aware of its dark energy and suspects that Park’s grandfather was buried in such a terrible location for a sinister reason. He even considers backing out of the job completely, but Hwa-rim convinces him that she can perform a ritual that will keep any evil forces at bay.

The heart of Exhuma comes from the interactions of its four main characters. Kim Go-eun and Choi Min-siik (of Oldboy fame) are charismatic actors and their characters are easy to root for. Hwa-rim and Kim represent the last remnants of dying fields and they both have adopted a bit of a milk-the-wealthy-for-all-their-worth attitude in order to survive. But we also see a real professionalism in how they go about their work and that those spirits they are dealing with are often real. This is a team of paranormal specialists that gets results, or at least they should, except this job ends up bigger than four people and some of the additional hires brought in end up having lapses in judgment that derail an already complicated exhumation.  

Exhuma might have Hollywood-like production values and pacing, but this is a film that is unabashedly South Korean. It grapples with ideas related to Japanese colonial rule- especially in the back half- something I admit Western audiences might find confusing. But don’t worry, Reddit is there to answer your questions. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help me understand better some of the culturally nuanced plot points. The film includes a number of jabs at the Japanese, including a funny comment on the indiscriminate bloodthirstiness of Japanese ghosts. It’s a comment on the difference between how ghosts are used in Japanese folklore in comparison to South Korea, but the dig also works if you’re a fan of horror cinema. 

The story is divided into five acts, but really it tells two stories with very different, but connected, evil entities. And that might be my favourite thing about Exhuma. Director Jang Jae-hyum gives each evil its own unique form, capabilities and motivations, so the second half doesn’t feel like a repeat of the first. And we get to see the team in action twice as residual problems related to that first exhumation escalate. Honestly, Jae-hyum could have easily split Exhuma into two films, using only one gravedigger’s encounter with an unusual snake and a cryptic spiritual message as loose ends to help set up a second film. The film has enough material to have been a franchise, but I like just having the one epic movie better. It sets Exhuma apart as something special.

Exhuma is actually the third film by director Jang Jae-hyum to blend horror elements with mystery. It is a fun, well-paced story that includes good visual effects, an excellent cast portraying interesting, original characters. And, in its own way, it serves as its own double-feature. If you’re a fan of Korean films, which I think by now we all are, pop this one on.

(I recommend starting this one a bit before midnight)