Marui Video

 A marui video is, according to... well, the movie Marui Video, a term prosecutors in Korea use for evidence media that, because it's too violent or disturbing, is not released to the public.

 A documentarian and a reporter (Seo Hyun-woo and Jo-Min-Kyoung, I think - information on this one is a bit thin on the ground if you don't know Korean) get wind of a 'cursed' video depicting the 1992 murder of a woman by her boyfriend in an inn room in Busan. It's a marui because it captures the killing, but it's cursed because at one point you can clearly see the face of a kid looking out from one of the mirrors in the room.

 They set out, along with a small crew, to try and track down the tape. What we're watching here is not the documentary these people made - it's one put together by a company called Marui LLC, based on original crew's collected footage, which was found in an abandoned van outside a shrine in 2019 and has just now released to the public due to a legal dispute. Got that? I guess it then technically doesn't count as marui, even though it includes footage from an actual marui video.

 Most of the film is actually comprised of a pretty compelling investigation - first a quest for the videotape itself, and then a delve into some ancillary details surrounding the murder. Particularly, the crew starts looking into the shady owner of the inn - a man who also owned another property where a kid brutally killed his mother and sister and then set himself on fire. The boy, incidentally, looks exactly like the figure in the mirror in the video.

 Writer/director Yoon Joon-Hyeong does a good job making sure both the mundane and supernatural elements of the film's intertwined mysteries link up in satisfying ways, and things mostly end up making sense. Which is good, because this is a slow, dry movie. There are a few flourishes - one of the funnier ones is a recurring genealogical tree that keeps getting edited, and thanks to the documentary gimmick, the film is slickly edited and usually has a number of angles to choose from in any given scene.

 It's good at the creepy stuff, too. The shadow of Noroi looms large, of course, but I think the contained and more straightforward thrust of the plot here is enough to differentiate it. The nature of the curse here is a little less J-horror-inspired, even if it includes several nods to the subgenre (my favorite - whenever the 'curse' manifests, it fills the ceiling with black mould that looks like the burn stains where the kid immolated himself).
 There's a standout Korean exorcism sequence and a few derelict house exploration scenes that are pretty effective. They balance out with the sadly prevalent 'running through the woods in the dark' finale, at least, and some staggeringly bone-headed decision-making on the part of our protagonists - which is a shame, because they're a likeable lot otherwise. Like on virtually all these movies, the filmmaking is only preoccupied with immediacy and immersion, with everything else a tertiary concern at best. It scores some good ambiance, but other than that it tends to look like ass.

 The unique mystery at the center and the (slow) way it's drawn out are probably the main draws here - the horror is a bit more hit and miss. I'm glad I watched it, but if you don't enjoy this particular genre I wouldn't recommend it.