| Director | Jang Jae-hyun |
|---|---|
| Budget | $11 million |
| Box office | $93.9 million |
Renowned Korean shaman Hwa-rim and her protégé, Bong-gil, are enlisted by a wealthy Korean American real estate developer family to identify the mysterious illness affecting the family’s newborn son. Hwa-rim uncovers the curse to be a “Grave’s Call”, a vengeful ancestor's spirit haunting them. The family’s patriarch, Park Ji-yong, entrusts them with relocating the grave to appease the ancestor, his grandfather. Hwa-rim enlists her colleagues, feng shui master and geomancer Kim Sang-deok and mortician Yeong-geun, with a promise of a huge payday of 500,000 USD from the job, especially Sang-deok, who is in need of money to pay for his daughter’s wedding.
Sang-deok specialises in selling burial locations for the wealthy, while Yeong-geun owns a funeral home. During their first encounter with Ji-yong, Sang-deok becomes wary when Ji-yong insists on cremating the grave, which is located on a remote mountain near the North Korean border. Sang-deok backs out, sensing sinister energy, but Ji-yong convinces him to reconsider by doubling the payout for the job. Hwa-rim then persuades them that she can perform a ritual while the grave is being dug to avoid the curse. Ji-yong tells them about a famous monk named ‘Gisune’, who, in order to assuage grave robbers, provided the grave’s location for his grandfather.
Hwa-rim and Bong-gil perform the ritual, and the excavation proceeds smoothly. However, while cleaning up, one of the gravediggers severs the head of a human-headed snake, which triggers a bad omen and rain. Yeong-geun insists on cremating the coffin once the rain stops, so they store it at a nearby ward. The local custodian, having heard rumours of treasure in the tomb, greedily opens the coffin and accidentally releases the vengeful entity inside: Ji-yong’s grandfather. The entity targets his bloodline, killing Ji-yong’s parents and Ji-yong himself. The grandfather, revealed to have been a collaborator with Imperial Japan during the colonial period, is tormented by his improper burial. Sang-deok cremates the coffin before the entity can kill the baby, ending the curse.
Months later, Yeong-geun informs Sang-deok about a gravedigger who has become disturbed after killing the snake. Sang-deok revisits the gravesite and discovers the head of the “snake”, along with a second burial site containing a seven-foot-long standing coffin. He enlists Hwa-rim, Bong-gil, and Yeong-geun to dispose of the coffin. The four excavate it and rest at a temple, where Hwa-rim learns about Gisune, who turns out to be a powerful Japanese shaman named Murayama Junji, who bears the moniker of The Fox. That night, Bong-gil witnesses an oni killing the temple priest and the local pig farmer, along with his pigs. Hwa-rim and Bong-gil find the coffin ripped open from the inside, and Hwa-rim is ambushed by the oni, who is revealed to be a samurai who lost and died in the Battle of Sekigahara and was originally enshrined in Japan before being transferred to Korea. Bong-gil is injured and possessed, and the others witness the oni turn into a ball of fire flying back to the mountain.
Hwa-rim investigates the oni’s origin through the possessed Bong-gil. Sang-deok returns to the grave and finds the samurai dormant at the coordinates written on the grandfather’s tombstone. It is revealed that during the Japanese occupation of Korea, Imperial Japan ordered its shamans to place multiple large iron spiritual spikes throughout the country to disrupt its life force so that they could more easily rule over occupied Korea. Sang-deok discovers that the supposed grave robbers were Korean patriots attempting to unearth and remove these spiritual spikes, and that the Samurai oni is actually the guardian spirit tasked by Gisune to protect one of the spikes. Sang-deok, Hwa-rim, and Yeong-geun devise a plan to unearth the relic when the creature rises after midnight. Hwa-rim will distract the samurai while the others dig the grave. A vision reveals The Fox embedding a katana inside a decapitated samurai’s body, turning the samurai into a tsukumogami, and Ji-yong’s grandfather’s grave serving as a cover for the relic. Sang-deok realises that the samurai himself is the iron spike and that, as he is represented by fire in feng shui, he must be vanquished by the element of water and wood. Sang-deok then uses a wooden pickaxe drenched in his own blood to successfully vanquish the samurai spirit. Injured, he faints but later regains consciousness in hospital with the others by his bedside. A few months later, the group attends Sang-deok’s daughter’s wedding.