An archeologist husband and a forensic anthropologist wife take on the job of searching for and exhuming the contested body of a boy on the grounds of a Christian camp for troubled teenaged males. They bring along their teenaged daughter, who has a history of mental illness, to help them. As they search for the body, she experiences ever more intense visions of the camp through the eyes of the boy until eventually things come to a head and the camp's horrific secret is revealed.
EXHUME starts off fairly well, and the first act, which sets up the story while literally providing flashbacks through the eyes of the hapless camp residents, is very effective. Unfortunately, after that, events become increasingly implausible.
I don't want to give away too much, but both the parents' actions seem less and less like what real parents would do in their situation, and the abilities of a girl who is, shall we say, not right in her mind, become more and more far-fetched. For example, toward the end, there is a car explosion without any obvious detonator, and a person is magically able to outrun undetected another person who is running back and forth.
There is an epilogue which suggests a possible sequel, but that would be a very different kind of movie because of how this one ends.
At any rate, the movie is well-shot and well-acted (though I feel the camp could have been given a bit more "personality") and probably quite entertaining if one does not think too hard about the later events.
Finally, I have a criticism which I cannot mention without a spoiler, so you have been warned.
SPOILER
I find it offensive that the movie implicitly seems to justify the evil of torturing and killing dozens of boys through the evil of a single psychopathic boy. I am actually a fan of movies with moral gray zones, and in principle, the idea of setting up competing evils is quite good. The problem here specifically is that by means of the "trial by fire" plot device this movie seems to suggest that a far greater evil is somehow justified when it is inflicted upon purported psychopaths.
