Many people were shocked to find out the actor was a baseball player and it was his actual height.
The actor was Kim Byeong-oh, a former basketball player. He shockingly acted as the main villain in the second half of the movie “Exhuma” and boasted an overwhelming performance with his 220 centimeter height.
His role has contributed to the movie’s box office success. The movie “Exhuma,” which was released on April 22, has attracted more than 7 million viewers in 16 days (as of March 8). The scene of him coming out of the tomb and chewing the slang alive in the movie made the Japanese samurai ghost, played by Kim Byung-oh, even more bizarre.
In fact, Kim Byung-oh’s casting has proved the “sense of reality” shown by director Jang Jae-hyun as he tried to avoid using CGI. “When I was invited, I thought, ‘Why do they need me? They can do it with CGI,’” Kim Byung-oh said in an interview with Sports Chosun.
“In movies like ‘Avatar’, they use CGI that can even make small look like 3 to 4 meters in size, right? So when I was invited, I wondered why they needed me. But I found out while watching the movie. Oh! It was this! It took me six hours to put makeup on my hands, feet, and face, and two hours to erase it. That’s how much effort he put into directing.”
The actor also revealed the goblin fire that appeared with the Japanese ghost in the latter half of the movie was not CGI but a real thing.
However, Kim Byung Oh is just an athlete, it is difficult to ensure facial expressions, not to mention his facial expressions also look very gentle and not like Japanese people. That’s why the crew used Kim Byung Oh’s body and used another actor to portray the face and acting of the evil spirit, that is Kim Min Jun. That’s not enough, to perfect the character Oni, the crew also asked for the help of two more people. That is, voice actor Rikiya Koyama (famous for Naruto) takes on the Japanese dialogue and voice actor Choi Nak Yoon takes on the parallel Korean voice (when Bong Gil is admitted to the hospital).
Only one character uses 4 actors, this is probably a rare case in Korean cinema. The audience also admired the meticulousness, investment and perfectionism of the film crew. Because right from the beginning, they could choose to use cinematic effects for both the body and face of this character. But in the end, they still tried their best to find Oni so that it could become the most realistic and haunting.
