Exhuma: Beyond the Burial

At first glance, Exhuma appears straightforward. It presents itself as a familiar rites-gone-wrong story. A burial. Something unsettled. Consequences that follow.

But the film does something quietly unusual. It assumes familiarity — with land, with belief, with history — and moves on.

If you pause and question what you’re seeing, the experience shifts. What initially looks like a horror story slowly reveals itself as something worth taking notes from.

This isn’t an interpretation of Exhuma. It’s a record of the cultural fields the film opens up, if you’re willing to pay attention.

Geomancy: Exhuma’s primary language

More than any other element, Exhuma is anchored in geomancy — it forms the film’s most visible and immediate layer.

Graves are not incidental. Placement is not arbitrary. Land is treated as something that responds.

The film doesn’t pause to explain this logic. It operates on it. Mountain forms, soil conditions, orientation, and disturbance — all appear as practical considerations rather than mystical embellishments.

If you’re unfamiliar with Korean geomancy, this is where the note-taking instinct usually begins. If you are familiar, the film reads almost procedural.

Land as a carrier of history

As the film progresses, geography and history become difficult to separate.

It isn’t just land in a general sense, but which land. Where it sits. What surrounds it. How close it is to mountains, borders, or past fault lines.

Certain locations feel burdened. Certain sites carry an unease that seems older than the characters themselves — not because anything is explained, but because placement itself feels consequential.

There are no flashbacks, no historical exposition. Yet war, displacement, and occupation linger quietly through terrain rather than plot. The past doesn’t interrupt the film — it settles into location.

Land is never neutral here. Its position, proximity, and orientation all seem to matter. Memory isn’t abstract; it’s spatial.

Shamans and geomancers as working professionals

The film places shamans and geomancers directly within the flow of events — not as symbols, but as necessary actors.

They are called in to read situations others cannot, to assess and intervene where modern logic stalls. Their presence moves the narrative forward in practical, concrete ways.

At the same time, their authority feels conditional. They are listened to, yet not fully centred. Needed, yet not entirely trusted.

This tension hints at a wider shift: traditions that once structured everyday life now operate at the edges of a younger, modern society. Exhuma doesn’t comment on this directly. It simply leaves the unease to linger.

Belief systems as everyday logic

Belief in Exhuma is treated plainly.

Rituals happen without emphasis. Superstitions are followed without explanation. They appear less as beliefs to argue with, and more as things people simply do.

There is little aesthetic signalling around belief, yet it quietly shapes the entire atmosphere of the film. The tension, the unease, the weight of scenes come less from visuals and more from the assumptions that belief creates.

No one pauses to justify these practices. They’re part of the environment the characters move through — noticed mainly when ignored.

The film treats belief as functional rather than symbolic, and allows it to do the heavier work of setting tone and mood.

Mantras and restraint in speech

Words in the film are handled with care.

Mantras are repeated, corrected, sometimes withheld. Speech feels deliberate, measured, purposeful. Some of these mantras are allegedly real, and because of their intensity and ritual weight, they are intentionally left unsubtitled — allowed to exist as sound and force rather than dialogue.

Watching it in the original Korean audio, even with subtitles, preserves the cadence, intensity, and weight of these moments in a way dubbing would flatten.

In a world of constant language and casual speech, this restraint stands out quietly. The intensity of these chants is alleged to have affected the actors themselves, reinforcing the sense that words here are not performance but something active. The film never highlights this, but it invites you to notice.

Horror as the surface, not the subject

What presents itself as horror is often the result of small deviations.

Misplacement. Inattention. Steps skipped. Things done almost right.

Fear builds gradually, less through shock and more through imbalance. Horror becomes a container rather than the point.

At Last,

Exhuma can be watched straight through. It can also be watched with a notebook.

The difference lies not in the film, but in how much you choose to pause.

For viewers interested in culture, belief systems, land, and inherited memory, Exhuma offers far more than it explains — and perhaps that is precisely why it stays with you.

~Hiyaa Upadhhyay