I’m still trying to figure out how Exhuma became my go-to cozy watch.
I have always shied away from horror movies. I hate jump scares, and I look around corners in the night if I’m alone. I am hypocritical about how afraid I am of supernatural ghouls.
However, over time, I have slowly stripped this crippling fear of mine away systematically.
I don’t like jump scares, but jump scares don’t happen in real life. Unless we have our backs turned to the door when in danger. So, naturally, I never turn my back to the door when alone. When alone, I always enter dark rooms and stand with my back facing a concrete, windowless wall. And where in real life does anyone operate with the limited field of vision of a close-up shot?
I’ve also fully learned to disregard characters getting gored when they act without rationale. Splitting into extremely small groups to search a haunted mansion today gets me more frustrated than it builds tension.
Exhuma works with all the factors that I respect. These are intelligent, rational people. They are also thoughtful experts. None of them are weak or take unnecessary risks. I first watched Exhuma soundless, as is my wont. With subtitles. The slow camera angles and the lilting music (with slight unmuting whenever I was sure there weren’t going to be scares) slowly drew me in.
By the third time around, I was watching it completely engrossed in the full movie experience.
Now I rewatch it for the rain pounding on the cozy wayside shrine, where the team of experts rests with the extra-long coffin they’ve unearthed. I feel extra snug when Yeong-geun pulls the piping-hot soup toward himself, almost falling asleep from exhaustion. All the foreboding predicts extreme danger, and yet, here is a mortician taking a brief break to enjoy his meal.
The context and setting intermingle to create a warmth, a certain Hygge, that is impossible to attain without looming danger at close hand.
Though some disagree with the direction the movie takes in the second half, I, for one, love it precisely for that narrative choice. I come back again and again to the quiet comfort in the face of supernatural danger, in the company of rational experts who face the occult with such everyday candor.
Exhuma has set me on a journey to find coziness in horror movies.
Exhuma is what we would call a spark movie. A movie that ignited my love for a certain genre of well-made horror movies that speaks deeply to my need for an amniotic safe space.
It eschews the usual tropes. Especially that of humans climbing walls. Watching humans slither unnaturally up and down smooth vertical surfaces like reptiles is a particularly effective shiver inducer.
Imagine, then, as I stood at the edge of the forest, peering through my binoculars at a huge tree trunk, a pair of eyes and a beak crawling into view from the top of my field of vision.
Blood-red beak, jaundiced eyes, and walking face-first downward, the creature moved out of view.
By the time I recovered enough from my fear paralysis, I could not locate it anymore. Had I been hallucinating?
I realized that I had my back towards the open trees. I was alone. I was in a forest. And I had seen something unnatural in the natural world.
I should have turned and run, but my feet suddenly refused to move. I was rooted to the spot against my will. I realized horror movies are only funny from the right side of the monitor.
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