He’s known for ‘Saw.’ But in his new film, KC area director goes for horror, not gore

Darren Lynn Bousman grew up in Overland Park watching horror movies rented from Blockbuster, then cut his directorial teeth on the grisly “Saw” movies. But his days of gore are in the days of yore.

“I’m no longer consumed in those types of movies,” he said. “I’m consumed in cartoons. I’m consumed with Disney princesses.”

That’s what happens when you have a 9-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter.

“I think the way I look at movies and look at horror has changed considerably since having kids,” Bousman said via Zoom from Los Angeles.

“I don’t look at violence the same way I used to. It used to be a gimmick. It was something to see how much blood could I throw, how much gore could I put on the screen.”

Bousman has directed four movies in the “Saw” series, most recently “Spiral” (2021). They include some of the most gruesome deaths in movie history.

His latest movie — “The Cello” — isn’t exactly “Mary Poppins,” but it’s more supernatural than super gory.

Featuring Oscar winner Jeremy Irons and “Saw” villain Tobin Bell, it boasts an otherwise Arab-speaking cast and is based on a novel by Saudi poet and writer Turki Alalshikha. It will open Dec. 8 in theaters nationwide, including several in the Kansas City area.

It is something of a “character study,” Bousman said.

“It’s not your traditional horror film by any means,” he said. “It’s not a ‘Saw’ movie.

“Yes, the cello is cursed. Yes, the cello has ghosts in it. Yes, there are people who will be killed. But it’s tame enough that I’m showing it to my 80-year-old mother.”

Bousman, who attended Shawnee Mission North High School and the University of Kansas, said his older brother, Lance, introduced him to horror movies when he was “very young, way too young. I think he screwed me up as a kid. Ever since then it’s been game over for me.”

Although he and his family now live in Los Angeles, Bousman returns regularly to this area (his mother lives in Lee’s Summit) and has a project in the works that will bring him here even more over the next year. It is a theatrical production involving a haunted house.

“I can’t say what it is yet,” he said, “but I will be in KC next Halloween working with a local KC business scaring people.”

He still visits The Beast and The Edge of Hell, the vaunted haunted houses in the West Bottoms where he and his brother and sister made annual pilgrimages. But Bousman said his cinematic experiences have changed since his Blockbuster days when the family watched the likes of “Elvira: Mistress of the Dark” and “Creepshow.”

Even the movies that inspired him, “The Exorcist,” “The Omen” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” don’t pack the horror punch they once did.

“The movies that I find unnerve me the most are not horror films,” he said. “Being a father, any time that I see family drama or family turmoil, I have a hard time dealing with it.

“What scares me as a person now is much different than what scared me as a 20-year-old. Any time I see families in trouble, in danger, or kids in danger, I can’t handle it. I can’t watch it.”

The real world has made creating horror films more challenging as well.

“Every time you open the paper or turn on the news, it’s murder, it’s killing, it’s turmoil, it’s tragedy,” Bousman said. “It’s hard now to really affect someone on that level because the horrors of the world to me always outweigh the horrors of cinema.”

He said the alternative to competing with real-world horrors is to make a movie that explores the “fantastical world.”

“The Cello” does just that.

It follows a Saudi cellist (Samer Ismail) who can’t resist the allure of a beautiful cello offered by a mysterious shop owner (Bell). The cellist finds fame and fortune, but they come with a cost. Irons plays an ancient conductor who is part of the instrument’s nefarious past.

Most of the film is in Arabic with English subtitles, although some sections are in English.

Bousman took on the project in part because it is unlike anything he had done.

“I got the opportunity to work with this international cast and shoot in places that had been closed to everyone basically for 40 years,” he said. “I got to travel the world on this movie. We shot it in Saudi Arabia, in Prague, in Italy, in Ireland. So for me it was such a strange, unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience.”