Renowned Korean shaman Hwa-rim and her protégé, Bong-gil are enlisted by a wealthy Korean American family to identify the mysterious illness of 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 to relocate the grave to appease the ancestor, his grandfather. Hwa-rim enlists colleagues, a Feng shui master Kim Sang-deok and a mortician Yeong-geun with a promise of huge payday, especially Sang-deok who’s in need of money to pay his daughter’s wedding.
Sang-deok specializes 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 in 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. However, Hwa-rim convinces them she can perform a ritual while the grave is 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 location for his grandfather.
Hwa-rim and Bong-gil perform the ritual, and the excavation proceeds smoothly. But when 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, hearing rumors of a treasure in the tomb, greedily opens the coffin and thus 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 be a Japanese loyalist during the Korean occupation era, is tormented by his improper burial. Sang-deok cremates the coffin before the entity can kill the baby, abolishing the curse.
Months later, Yeong-geun informs Sang-deok about a gravedigger who becomes disturbed after killing the snake. He revisits the gravesite and discovers the head of the “snake” along with a second burial site for 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 has the moniker of The Fox. That night, Bong-gil witnesses a ghoul killing the temple priest and the local pig farmer along with his pigs. Hwa-rim and Bong-gil find the coffin ripped from the inside and Hwa-rim is ambushed by the ghoul who is revealed to be a samurai. Bong-gil gets injured and possessed, and the others witness the ghoul turn into a ball of fire flying back to the mountain.
Hwa-rim investigates the ghoul’s origin through the possessed Bong-gil. Sang-deok returns to the grave and finds the samurai dormant on the coordinates written on the grandfather’s tombstone. It is revealed that during Japanese occupation of Korea, the Imperial Japan ordered their shamans to put multiple large iron spiritual spikes throughout the country to disrupt the country’s life force so they could easily rule over the occupied Korea. He discovers that the supposed grave robbers were Korean patriots attempting to unearth and remove these spiritual spikes in Korea and the Samurai ghoul is actually the guardian spirit that was 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 ghoul and Ji-yong’s grandfather’s grave serving as a cover for the relic. Sang-deok realizes that the samural himself is the iron spike and since he is represented fire in Feng Sui, he must be vanquished by the element of water and wood. Sang-deok then uses the wooden pick axe drenched in his own blood to successfully vanquish the samurai spirit. Injured, he faints but later regains consciousness at a hospital with the others by his bedside. A few months later the group attends Sang-deok’s daughter’s wedding.
