Exhuma

A wealthy Korean American family calls in a shaman to break a curse that has run through generations. The team goes up a mountain to move the family grave. The site, the stone and the orientation are all wrong from the start, and as the dig goes on what comes up is more than a body. Behind it lies an account that reaches back to the Japanese occupation. Jang Jae-hyun directed. Choi Min-sik, Kim Go-eun, Yoo Hae-jin and Lee Do-hyun star. Shooting ran from October 2022 to March 2023. Jang said he avoided CGI wherever possible and tried to film the backgrounds and objects for real. It premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on 16 February 2024 and opened in South Korea on 22 February. It broke the opening-day record, passed 10 million admissions on 24 March 2024 and took 93.9 million dollars worldwide, making it the highest-grossing South Korean film of 2024. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 93 percent. Reviews praised the performances and the care taken over cultural detail, with some objecting to the pacing. Who it is for: viewers who want Korean shamanism, burial custom and a historical reckoning inside a horror film. Who it is not for: anyone put off by a change of genre halfway through. The film moves from mystery straight into a creature story.