Baek Sun-ju
Cho Yeo-jeong
Baek Sun-ju
Murderer Report
“Eleven killed. One interview request.”
7.1
2025
1h 48m
DramaThriller
Director: Cho Young-jun
Overview
The story of a serial killer, Yeong-hoon, who murdered 11 people, offering a special interview with Seon-joo, a veteran reporter who is desperate for a scoop.
Trailer
Official Trailer [ENG SUB] Official
Cast
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Theater of Complicity
The interview film is a distinct and perilous subgenre. From *Frost/Nixon* to *Interview with the Vampire*, these narratives rely not on kinetic action, but on the shifting tectonic plates of conversation. They are chamber pieces where words are weapons and the camera is a lie detector. Cho Young-jun’s *Murderer Report* (2025) enters this arena with a premise that feels ripped from a sensationalist headline but executes it with the disciplined tension of a stage play. It is a film less about the act of killing than about the consumption of it—a cold, claustrophobic examination of why we watch the monster, and what the monster sees when he looks back.
Director Cho Young-jun makes a bold stylistic choice to confine the majority of the film’s runtime to a luxury hotel suite. This decision strips away the usual safety nets of the thriller genre; there are no car chases or sprawling investigations to distract us. Instead, the visual language is suffocatingly intimate. The cinematography favors tight, uncomfortable close-ups that trap the viewer in the room with Seon-joo (Cho Yeo-jeong) and her subject. The lighting is clinical, almost surgical, reflecting the antagonist's profession as a psychiatrist. When violence does appear, it is often mediated through screens—cell phone videos shown to the reporter—forcing the audience to become voyeurs twice over. We are watching a woman watch a murder, implicating us in her morbid curiosity.
The film’s pulse beats entirely through its two leads. Cho Yeo-jeong, known globally for *Parasite*, sheds the naive housewife persona to inhabit Seon-joo, a veteran reporter whose moral compass has been demagnetized by professional desperation. She is not a noble truth-seeker; she is a starving animal looking for a meal. Across from her sits Jung Sung-il as Yeong-hoon, the serial killer who frames his crimes as "treatment." Jung’s performance is terrifyingly restrained. He avoids the cackling tropes of cinematic psychopaths, instead playing Yeong-hoon with the soothing, authoritative cadence of a doctor delivering a diagnosis. The dynamic is electric: a woman who needs a story to survive, and a man who needs an audience to validate his god complex.
The script’s intellectual ambition lies in its deconstruction of the "scoop." The film asks a jagged question: at what point does reporting on evil become a collaboration with it? Yeong-hoon’s stipulation—"If the interview stops, the killing begins"—is a masterstroke of narrative entrapment. It transforms the interview from a journalistic endeavor into a hostage negotiation where the currency is attention. As the layers of Yeong-hoon’s "vigilante" philosophy are peeled back, the film critiques the modern audience's appetite for true crime. We want to understand the "why," but *Murderer Report* suggests that the "why" is often just a narcissistic justification for brutality, and our listening is what gives it power.
Ultimately, *Murderer Report* is a gripping, if occasionally talky, psychodrama that transcends its thriller trappings. It may lack the kinetic energy of a traditional blockbuster, but it replaces it with a suffocating dread that lingers. It forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality that in the age of viral tragedy, the camera lens is often just as cold as the killer's eye.
The interview film is a distinct and perilous subgenre. From *Frost/Nixon* to *Interview with the Vampire*, these narratives rely not on kinetic action, but on the shifting tectonic plates of conversation. They are chamber pieces where words are weapons and the camera is a lie detector. Cho Young-jun’s *Murderer Report* (2025) enters this arena with a premise that feels ripped from a sensationalist headline but executes it with the disciplined tension of a stage play. It is a film less about the act of killing than about the consumption of it—a cold, claustrophobic examination of why we watch the monster, and what the monster sees when he looks back.
Director Cho Young-jun makes a bold stylistic choice to confine the majority of the film’s runtime to a luxury hotel suite. This decision strips away the usual safety nets of the thriller genre; there are no car chases or sprawling investigations to distract us. Instead, the visual language is suffocatingly intimate. The cinematography favors tight, uncomfortable close-ups that trap the viewer in the room with Seon-joo (Cho Yeo-jeong) and her subject. The lighting is clinical, almost surgical, reflecting the antagonist's profession as a psychiatrist. When violence does appear, it is often mediated through screens—cell phone videos shown to the reporter—forcing the audience to become voyeurs twice over. We are watching a woman watch a murder, implicating us in her morbid curiosity.
The film’s pulse beats entirely through its two leads. Cho Yeo-jeong, known globally for *Parasite*, sheds the naive housewife persona to inhabit Seon-joo, a veteran reporter whose moral compass has been demagnetized by professional desperation. She is not a noble truth-seeker; she is a starving animal looking for a meal. Across from her sits Jung Sung-il as Yeong-hoon, the serial killer who frames his crimes as "treatment." Jung’s performance is terrifyingly restrained. He avoids the cackling tropes of cinematic psychopaths, instead playing Yeong-hoon with the soothing, authoritative cadence of a doctor delivering a diagnosis. The dynamic is electric: a woman who needs a story to survive, and a man who needs an audience to validate his god complex.
The script’s intellectual ambition lies in its deconstruction of the "scoop." The film asks a jagged question: at what point does reporting on evil become a collaboration with it? Yeong-hoon’s stipulation—"If the interview stops, the killing begins"—is a masterstroke of narrative entrapment. It transforms the interview from a journalistic endeavor into a hostage negotiation where the currency is attention. As the layers of Yeong-hoon’s "vigilante" philosophy are peeled back, the film critiques the modern audience's appetite for true crime. We want to understand the "why," but *Murderer Report* suggests that the "why" is often just a narcissistic justification for brutality, and our listening is what gives it power.
Ultimately, *Murderer Report* is a gripping, if occasionally talky, psychodrama that transcends its thriller trappings. It may lack the kinetic energy of a traditional blockbuster, but it replaces it with a suffocating dread that lingers. It forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality that in the age of viral tragedy, the camera lens is often just as cold as the killer's eye.