This review may contain spoilers
to be continued?
I was very excited to see this film as I am very keen on Lee Jong Won and Kim Jun Han and folklore based horrors.Unfortunately, I left the screening quite disappointed. The actors delivered solid performances ,no complaints whatsoever. Especially, Kim Jun Han character was creepy and had this unsettling vibe surrounding him. I'm not going into much detail but the film was marred with red herrings, unimpressive water ghosts and chaotic and inconsistent writing-basically,lazy storytelling.
There were no rules,rituals or folklore based survival tactics. The film's world building was inconsistent, everything appeared to be an illusion after the sunset (and even before -another fallacy),just being in the close proximity guarantee your death. Having Gyo-sik's body already sitting in a real-world morgue in the hospital while his clone roamed the lake completely shattered the movie's timeline and violated the idea of the soul exchange according to the Korean folklore (escape from the lake is Mulgwishin Jakjeon (Water Ghost Tactic): they must actively lure, trick, or drag a living human down into the water to take their place).It was also very puzzling that the crew knew that the senior DP was missing after visiting the place, choose to ignore the reservoir bad lore and refused to implement any safety measures.
To think this film generated so much noise and hype doesn't inspire confidence, and it was commercialised more effectively than it was crafted.It was done well enough to make a stir and make so many people go to the theatre yet quality of film does not support it. My expectations were shattered.
There are some good jumpscares though,clever use of diegetic ambient noise and the atmospehere was thick and unsettling.I felt their terror, their ability to escape was non negotiable. Classic B-rated flick I would say,nothing novel ,no solutions or set rules to escape,no coherent narrative .They were simply doomed the moment they stepped into the lake/reservoir area and stayed after the sunset.
I am rating it 6.5/10 as the director abandoned consistent folklore logic for a generic, mindless "kill-them-all" doom and gloom ending. I think Exhuma deserves all the accolades as all events ,rituals,folklore and mythology behind it were very well researched and implemented. I understand that not everything should be logically explained in the horror genre but in the case of Salmokji it was kind of a let down.
'To be continued' gives me some hope that another film will explain the idea behind everything and gives some reason to the inconsistencies. It can be salvaged pretty well.
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