“[Exhuma] features a version of the slick, fast-paced, genre-mixing style that has defined many of the most internationally successful South Korean movies, including speculative works like Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013) and Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan (2016). Yet it is also replete with elements specific to Korean culture and historical memory to the extent that much of the narrative will likely be opaque to non-Korean viewers. These elements include the persistence of traditional forms of magic in Korean society and the historical trauma of the Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula (1910–45). They also include a particular myth concerning the Japanese attempt to destroy Korea through geomancy—a myth that I was in part responsible for spreading in the late 1990s.”

Read the entire piece at the LARB website here.