Fresh off the massive global success of Exhuma, director Jang Jae-hyun is officially diving into his next terrifying project, Vampir. ScreenDaily reports that principal photography kicks off this month, aiming for a theatrical bow in 2028.
The Next Nightmare
Exhuma shattered records as South Korea’s highest-grossing film of 2024 while dominating box offices in Vietnam and Indonesia. However, Jang has firmly ruled out any sequels. Instead, he spent two years penning an ambitious vampire tale heavily inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
“I want to make a vampire movie in Korea, set [against the backdrop of] the Greek Russian Orthodox church. I will spend two years writing before preparing and shooting, so perhaps it will be ready in four years,” Screendaily quotes Jang as saying.
A Killer Premise
Vampir delivers a spine-chilling storyline that echoes the hitman-meets-occult intensity of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List. The story follows a hardened contract killer. He is tasked by a clergyman with tracking down a secretive pagan organization. Naturally, hunting down ancient cults carries severe consequences. The hitman stumbles into a nightmare of blood, dark rituals, and terrifying physical changes.
An Elite Ensemble
Yoo Ah-in (Burning, Hellbound) commands the screen as the central hitman, while veteran actor Lee Sung-min (No Other Choice) steps into the shoes of the clergyman pulling the strings. Joining them is Lee Jun-hyuk (I Saw the Devil), who plays a desperate heretic seeking eternal life at the cost of a harrowing physical transformation. The ensemble is rounded out by performances from Yoon Kyung-ho (My Daughter Is A Zombie), Choi Hyun-wook (Weak Hero), and rising K-pop star Doy (Kim Do-i).
While You Wait
While we wait for more details to surface about Vampir, it’s a perfect time to watch or rewatch Exhuma. And it is available now on Prime Video.
The film centers on a wealthy Korean-American family that desperately needs to lift a terrifying, intergenerational curse from their newborn. They hire an elite team of occult specialists: a dynamic shaman duo (Kim Go-eun and Lee Do-hyun), a veteran feng shui master (Choi Min-sik), and a seasoned mortician (Yoo Hae-jin). Their task seems simple enough—exhume and relocate a dark ancestral grave hidden deep in a shadowy, remote Korean village. However, disturbing the forgotten soil inadvertently awakens a sinister, long-buried evil that turns their routine ritual into a fight for survival.
