LogFAQs > #977687726

We caught a late showing of The Cello last night. It's a Saudi Arabian horror film starring Jeremy Irons and Tobin Bell, so it is also partially in English as well as the native Arabic language. It's directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who also directed 4 of the SAW franchise films (II-IV, and Spiral). I really liked this film. Jeremy Irons is so delightfully devilish here and I thought the rest of the cast did a good job also. It's interesting to see a film from this country, especially a horror film. Not to get too political, but you'd almost be tricked into believing Saudi Arabia was a western nation given how this film goes. The horror feels quite western, and for a country so well known for being overly religious and has a bad reputation when it comes to women, you wouldn't know it from this film. There's even a brief mention by one of the characters of an older male character not being fair to women. It feels pretty progressive.

There are a good number of scares and there's no shying away from gore and violence either, which is again, something I found really surprising given the country of origin and how quick they seem to be to ban certain western films. The premise of this cursed musical instrument and the chaos it brings work really well I think, though I didn't really understand why it ended the way it did. That being said, I won't dock it too many points for that. Really great experience in my opinion.