The story is about a woman named Mi-ju who used to be a really good cello player but due to a car accident that killed her best friend, Mi-ju was scared and had to quit and became a cello teacher instead. So she leads a normal life but as the movie progresses her life becomes more and more tragic due to different events happening. She also has this somewhat slow daughter that she's trying to teach the cello to which just doesn't go the way it should, a new housekeeper that is really creepy and memories that haunts her.
Cello is also one of the new (when writing this) South Korean horror movies that came out this summer of 2005 along with Red Shoes and The Wig.
Problem is that I saw all three of them around the same time and I guess it would have been better to have seen them with a longer break between. Not that they are alike storywise, but just the fact that they are all new Korean horror movies which nowadays tend to look very much the same.
I actually think that I prefer the other two over this one but I still liked this movie as well, and especially the characters in it. It also felt more like a drama with a touch of horror compared to the other two which were focus on horror only.
 
You can tell that the movie really wants to be something and it sure could've been, but unfortunately that's not the case. The lack of suspense is sometimes throughout the movie too big and the scares are few and not very scary and the pace is sometimes way too slow for its own good.
The actors are great, especially Seong Hyeon-a playing Mi-ju, and the directing is very slick and it also has a great score consisting of, yeah that's right, cello music. I actually have the soundtrack for this movie to that came with the movie and it's pretty good. The music itself adds a lot of feeling to the movie, but unfortunately that's not enough.
Cello has a lot of potential, but does unfortunately not deliver all the way through. It might be that there are too many Korean horror movies out there these days, and that many of them end up looking the same in the end. It sure tries, but sorry to say, it's just not good enough. Still, for fans of Asian horror cinema, it's a movie worth checking out after all. At least you get great acting, a really good score, slick directing and a pretty interesting story.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Chello hongmijoo ilga salinsagan
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Woo-cheol Lee
WRITING CREDITS: Woo-cheol Lee
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Seong Hyeon-a, Da-an Park, Ho-Bin Jeong
COUNTRY: South Korea
RUNTIME: 94 min
RATING: 6/10
Cello Website/IMDB Click here
Cello Trailer Click here
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