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The vengeful ghost of Japanese imperialism rises to take its revenge on its forgetful children in Jang Jae-hyun’s eerie supernatural horror, Exhuma (파묘, Pamyo). As in The Wailing, the supernatural threat is in this case not of Korean origin which causes a problem for otherwise powerful shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun). As a Korean exorcist, she is apparently not best placed to defeat an alien spirit while insisting that Japanese ghosts are more dangerous because they kill indiscriminately and cannot be reasoned with.
This is often true of ghosts in Japanese folklore. Their grudges become all-consuming. Revenge is often taken against society or humanity in general rather than a specific target and can even affect those the ghost once would not have wished to harm. In this case, it appears the supernatural entity in question has retained some of his selfhood while screaming for a hundred years having been sealed away in what one person describes as the worst burial plot in Korea. The ghost’s newborn great grandson won’t stop crying, apparently a family affliction, and so they want to do something about this apparent curse. But that requires digging into the past and unearthing its unpleasantness such as the fact the family’s immense wealth is thanks to the great-grandfather’s questionable politics as a full on militarist committed to the furthering of the Japanese empire.
Meanwhile, the other ghost that haunts them is that of a giant samurai who was killed at the battle of Sekigahara, which of course means he could also have participated in Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea only eight years previously. The film hints at backstories, never explaining why it is that Hwa-rim speaks fluent Japanese or what it was that happened in Japan except that she apparently found out that Korean shamanism doesn’t work that well on the average Japanese ghost. It all goes back to some kind of mad monk and fox diviner who did some black magic on the peninsula as a whole though it’s not clear exactly what it’s been doing for the last 70 years or so.
These different kinds of spiritual practice and folklore beliefs jangle together seemingly without border or conflict. The funeral director (Yoo Hae-jin) who works with Hwa-rim and her geomancer friend (Choi Min-sik) is a Christian but apparently has no objection to witnessing shamanic rights nor disbelief in their power as if his twin belief systems simply sat next to each other. Even so, there does seem to be something entirely distinct about Hwa-rim’s practice that is different from Japanese Shintoism despite it its superficial similarities to the extent that her abilities have no effect on a Japanese spirit.
Then again, this evil is older and deeper than the original ghost apparently wailing for a hundred years about his imprisonment and keen to take down all his descendants in self-destructive revenge. A grave digger spots what seems to be a snake with the head of a person, while no one seems to take the warnings about opening the coffin seriously. Everyone talks about grave robbers, ironically looking for riches among the dead, though the what the team find themselves doing is unearthing the buried past, trying to free themselves from it and perhaps the oppressive yoke of the colonialist legacy.
Jang heightens the sense of anxiety with faced paced, rhythmic editing coupled with scenes of extreme eeriness. He hints at a world beyond our own filled with vengeful spirits and lurking evil while the threats are largely supernatural rather than human even if the ghosts themselves did originate as ordinary people who were also fairly problematic before they died. In some ways, the film might be saying that it doesn’t do any good to go digging up the past but also that if you don’t you may have to live with a slowly festering evil that will visit itself on your children and your children’s children. Still, like the little boy who secretly kept grandma’s false teeth because he wanted something to remember her by, the past can be a difficult thing to let go of and simply re-burying it in a nicer place may not be enough to free yourself from the long buried generational trauma of an almost forgotten past.
US trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 