Saturday, October 04, 2014

Cello

(2005)4 stars
This South Korean slow-burner focuses on the household of Mi-jun, a music professor who has retired from playing the cello after her best friend and fellow cellist Tae-yeon is killed in an auto accident. One afternoon she gets harrassed by a student who received a bad grade from her (a teacher’s worst nightmare and biggest “are you f-ing kidding me?” moment). After this, weird things start happening, doled out in mere jumpy scares and “did I just see the wall dripping blood?” instances. 

At home she is greeted by a dark house which gives us a false scare: her two daughters, husband, and sister-in-law are just hiding in the creepy attic before singing “Happy Birthday” to her. Around the same time that Mi-jun’s life begins to unravel a mysterious and mute housekeeper is hired and her husband inquires more into the incidents of Tae-yeon’s death.
Catfreeek reviewed this in '08 though nobody graced it with any comments. I concede that the slow-builders can be less promising -- especially at 8pm on a Friday night when you just want cheap thrills and screams, which was my situation -- but I found that the writers of Cello didn't take the intellect of their audience for granted, and as the end credits began to roll I erupted with a thousand hypotheticals, and many more alternate story lines to fill in the gaps intended to be left a mystery.

4 comments:

Catfreeek said...

I was on a big j- horror binge back then. If you watch too many of them they all start to run together.

DKC said...

Sounds like a good one! I may have to start watching more J-horror based on some of these recommendations. Not too much though - Cat does have a point!

AC said...

this one does sound relatively original. you are on a roll, crystal!

Johnny Sweatpants said...

My review on this is coming up shortly. I hear what you're saying Catfreeek about them all running together but this one had some game.

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