Cinema Scholars interviews The Vile director Majid Al Ansari ahead of the film’s World Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025. Fantastic Fest will take place from September 18 to 20 at the flagship Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX.
Introduction
One of the best parts of attending a genre film festival like Fantastic Fest is the chance to see films you might otherwise miss—especially ones that explore subject matter rarely addressed in the U.S. or the West. International films open a window into unfamiliar cultures and customs, all while entertaining their audiences. Genre films, in particular, offer a unique framework for examining delicate themes.
In Majid Al Ansari’s new film The Vile, the director explores polygamy—a custom still accepted and legal in many Arab nations—using it as the basis for a chilling morality tale.
Synopsis
Amani lives a happy life as Khalid’s wife and the mother of their teenage daughter, Noor. While Khalid often spends days away from home for work, Amani and Noor share a warm, playful bond in their beautiful house. But everything changes when Khalid returns from his travels with a shocking surprise: a second wife, Zahra.
Soon after, Khalid departs again, leaving Amani, Noor, and Zahra to coexist under one roof. As Amani struggles to accept this new reality, strange events and disturbing visions begin to plague her. Dark secrets from Zahra’s past come to light, further complicating Amani and Noor’s feelings about the newcomer. Before long, the sinister forces surrounding their home push Amani to question not only her identity—but also her sanity.
Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott sat down with director Majid Al Ansari to discuss his much-anticipated return to Fantastic Fest with the horror-thriller The Vile. Al Ansari’s debut feature, Rattle the Cage, premiered at the festival in 2015. Now, he returns with a deeply personal story that blends literal and figurative horror to explore an impossible situation.
In this interview, Al Ansari shares his thoughts on returning to one of the world’s great genre festivals, handling sensitive subject matter with care, and utilizing genre film as a powerful means to explore complex ideas while keeping audiences engaged.
Interview
Lightly edited for content and clarity
Rebecca Elliott:
Hello! How’s it going?
Majid Al Ansari:
Good. How are you doing?
Rebecca Elliott:
I’m really good! First, I have to say, welcome back to Fantastic Fest. As an Austinite, I’ve been going every year. You were at the 10th anniversary of the festival with Rattle The Cage, and now you’re back for the 20th anniversary with The Vile. Are you excited to be back at Fantastic Fest?
Majid Al Ansari:
I’m super excited. My first experience was with Rattle The Cage, and I loved the festival. Also, there’s a spirit to it. And just the people you’re surrounded with. I’ve been to a lot of festivals, and there’s nothing as unique. I always say this, and I don’t want to say it because my movie’s there. But I’m saying it because I really felt it. It’s this energy.
If there’s anyone that I’m going to ask, because I usually ask, “Okay, you like my movie or not?” it’ll be at Fantastic Fest, because otherwise I don’t believe they are genre fans. They are people who love the genre, they love the horror, they love the thrillers. And for me, I’m never… It’s rare to be surrounded by people like that who love and have that passion for the genre. I’m really, really excited. And it’s been 10 years since the last time, so I can’t wait to be back.
Rebecca Elliott:
Well, you’ll see the theater itself has changed a bunch, but the general vibe is still 100% the same. Everyone is just there to see some good movies, and hopefully, no one bugs you too much. Because it is really fun to see filmmakers there and be able to talk about these films that we’re such nerds about.
Majid Al Ansari:
100%. Yeah.
Rebecca Elliott:
You directed The Vile, but you wrote the story as well. What were some of your inspirations?
Majid Al Ansari:
I’m a big fan of psychopathy films. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is one of my favorite films. Another inspiration for this movie is Fatal Attraction and Adrian Lyne, because I’m a huge fan of his and of his work. But when it came to The Vile, for me, what was important was that it took me a long time because I knew the subject matter.
[Polygamy] is something that I grew up with in our region. I had the idea for 10 years. Since Rattle The Cage, I had the idea. I still remember this. I was speaking to my writers who wrote Rattle The Cage in Austin while the film was premiering. I’m like, I have this idea, but I just didn’t know how to approach it. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the subject matter. I didn’t want to go too fast. I’m glad I waited. I’m glad I matured and I grew up. I did my research, and I sat with a lot of people who went through it.
I just took a long time. Then, at the end of 2020, I wrote just a paragraph as a premise of what it is. I thought that I had an angle to it. I’m like, “Okay, I see where I could take this.” Then, of course, Johnnie [Alward] came on board. He’s a person I met from The Black List. Just like my first film, Rattle The Cage, the script came from The Black List website. I met Johnnie through the site, and we were working on the projects. Then two years later, we’re in production.
Rebecca Elliott:
Wow. That’s so crazy that some of the initial inspiration came from Fantastic Fest! And then here you are, 10 years later, with that film here. I love asking filmmakers in general, ‘What do you think it is about genre film that draws you back to it?’ It’s such a unique avenue for storytelling.
Majid Al Ansari:
You’re right. I feel like the genre aspect can open up a basic story and make it more entertaining. For example, you could take The Vile and make it a straight-up drama. But ultimately, that’s not a film that I like watching. I love films that will thrill, that make me on the edge of my seat. But the core is subject matter that really resonates with me. I think that’s what I did with The Vile. The subject matter itself was about polygamy. That’s the core of it. It’s about family dynamics. Taking the whole cultural aspect of polygamy apart.
But that could happen in the West. It could happen to a married guy, and he has this mistress. And no one knows about the mistress until he has a few kids, and they pop up. This ultimate betrayal is what a woman would go through or a family would go through. Here, the culture is that it just happens. It used to happen more often. Just like in our scenario, where a woman could live in the same household. It’s not only the wives that go through it, it’s also the kids. It’s both.
The whole family goes through this crisis together. I knew I wanted to talk about it, but then with the genre lens, you could make it a little bit less… It’s not about being less serious. But you could make it more thrilling and more entertaining. I want to watch a movie that will thrill me and that will be exciting. At the same time, it gives me something deeper to think about. I think that’s where genre comes in, and it’s very handy.
Rebecca Elliott:
Yeah. I always say that it’s just such a sneaky vehicle to get in some really serious subject matter. In a way, making it more of a metaphor almost makes it more powerful than just spelling it out for an audience.
Majid Al Ansari:
Exactly. 100 %.
Rebecca Elliott:
There’s a lot of female energy in this film. You’re working with three strong female characters in a female-driven story. Obviously, the dude has his part and instigates the whole thing. But tell me about working on such a female-driven story and what it was like working with your three lead actresses.
Majid Al Ansari:
I love it. I have a very strong mother, and I have a very strong wife, too. And I have two daughters, so I’m surrounded by women. My household is full of powerful Arab women. And they’re very vocal. We pushed the shoot out three months just to find the right actress for the main role, Amani. It was by accident.
I went to this theater show, the theater festival that we have here in Sharjah. The first show I saw was her [Bdoor Mohammad]. My jaw dropped. I’m like, “This is her. I found her. This is my angel. This is who’s going to represent my main character in my movie.” Then, of course, I sent her the script. From my first meeting, I knew she was the right person because she came to me. She’s like, “Hey, it took me five times to read the movie.” I’m like, “Why? Is it that bad?” She’s like, “No, it just hits too close to home.”
She told me her story, and I looked at her, and I’m like, yes, this is who I need. Because it is her voice. For me, the number one rule with this movie was to make it as authentic and culturally relevant and culturally in tune as possible. Having Bdoor, who had a lot to say about the subject matter, be my protagonist was the first step in the right direction with this movie, I feel. With Rattle The Cage, I would go to the set, and I know how I’m editing. I know exactly how I shot this thing. I know exactly how it’s going to come out.
But I think with this one, I knew the hard sequences. That’s the fun part. But when it came to the drama and the heart of the family story, even though we’re shooting film, which is why you don’t want to keep on using rolls. I spoke to the producer. I’m like, This is where I want to give a bit of leg room for the actors to really come in and bring their voices into it.
Whether it’s Bdoor as Amani. Or Sarah as Zahra, or Iman as Nour. I wanted their voices in the movie as much as possible. It was a great process. It was a collaborative process. Of course, because I was searching for the truth, and ultimately, that’s why I wanted it to come out. Once I cast the right people, it came easy. Well, it came more naturally, but not easily.
Rebecca Elliott:
One of the things that kept getting my attention while watching The Vile is the sound design. I feel like so many horror or thriller films these days rely too much on sound design. It starts to be almost distracting. But you did this incredibly delicate balance. Sometimes the sound design is the drone that we’re all used to. Sometimes it was this fluttering. Other times it was pulsating. You just really got super creative with the sound design. Was that on the page, or was it something that came in post with your sound team? Tell about designing the cool sound design.
Majid Al Ansari:
Thank you. I think it definitely came in post. But with sound and music, we were in conversations, especially music. Jerry Lane, who did my first film, came on board. Two months before we started filming, he sent me a score. He sent me an eight-track score of the movie. After reading the script, he just sent it to me. And he told me, he’s like, “Hey, just go on your shoot every morning. Just listen to my music. Listen to the music, I see the moment.”
We identified the sound of the music early on. But what happened later on, when we were editing it, we really wanted to give that balance of the harmony of the music and the sound to really work with each other instead of working against each other. That’s one thing. That’s why, for example, in the hard scenes, you see me much more on the silent side. Until the jump comes, I want you to feel like you’re sitting in a room. You turn off all the lights. And you think about those twisted thoughts of ghosts and demons.
You start hearing everything. Your ears magnify automatically. That’s the approach I took for the horror side of it. But then, when the emotional part came in, that’s when we wanted the music to really lift things up. It was a balance between sound design and the music. It took a long time. The music and sound, almost a year, a year and three months. Just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, going. Redoing like chunks of the movie.
Rebecca Elliott:
Well, it definitely paid off because I think it was extremely effective. I don’t know. I think for just a normal filmgoer, it’s probably not going to register as much. But since I watch so many films, I’m like, “Oh! They did something different.” It’s not just this overpowering sound design, and it did make me really listen. Likewise, I notice you also incorporate a juxtaposition of light and dark in your film. And so a lot of… I mean, obviously, scary things happened in the dark.
But you really use it as a tool here. In some scenes, it’s literally lights out, but in other sequences, it’s almost like a keyhole view, and it’s dark all around. I just found that really interesting. How did you work on that with your cinematographer and incorporate it at the right moments?
Majid Al Ansari:
Benji, who was my cinematographer, is a great guy and super talented. The first conversation we had was about movies that we love. One of the genres, when it comes to the visual look, two filmmakers I love a lot are Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, who did films like Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears. They are, let’s say, the Tarantino of the giallo genre. They took Mario Bava and Dario Argento and mixed them together in a Tarantino-esque style.
If you watch any of their movies, they’re incredible visual masterpieces. They play with a lot of the darks. They really play with that texture that I really love. Again, I love giallo. I love Mario Bava films. I love Dario Argento films. To see that updated and the new generation doing it and doing it differently. Then rewatching, Dario. That’s where my visual with the key holes, with the eyes, and with the extreme close-ups, that’s where my inspiration comes from because I love that genre.
But one of the things we did early on was that I wanted to shoot on 16mm. That by itself really made us give the visual language a very different language from automatic shooting on digital. We’re prepping hell out of it and then going in knowing exactly what we need to shoot. That was a conversation that Benji and I were having back and forth, doing testing, going to set. Because everything that was shot was all on a set that was built. Other than exteriors, everything is built on a sound stage. The reason why we did that is it gives us leg room when we’re prepping to go in, and Benji, and just start shooting pictures. Seeing the color, the tones, and how these angles work and stuff. A lot of it was in prep that we really decided the visual language of the movie.
One of the big inspirations was Darren Aronofsky’s Mother. A lot of the perspective, the visual language. That movie really, really helped us a lot with how I wanted to work. Because I wanted everything from Amani’s perspective, and we didn’t want to break that. I remember in the beginning of my shot list, I had cameras in the drawers. Cameras go off the roof and come down. But then we were like, no, no. Let’s just keep it from Amani’s perspective because that’s her story. It’s something that developed within us. Just watching movies that we love and that inspired us. Then, we implemented that in our movie.
Rebecca Elliott:
You have a character in this film who is duplicitous, let’s say. Of course, I’m talking about Zahra, the second wife, played by Sarah Taibah. She did such a great job handling that. What were some of your conversations going into it as far as not giving away too much, but also giving the audience just enough to question what the heck is going on?
Majid Al Ansari:
We definitely talked about it a lot because we grew up in that, right? We know what household this is because we’ve been, not necessarily us, specifically, but we’ve seen it with our neighbors. You hear the conversations with mom’s friends and stuff. We knew the perspectives that a second wife would automatically be in the house and what they would see. I remember saying to Sarah, “You know what? You’re going to come on, and the first thing they’re going to do is hate you because you’re the second wife. You’re ruining a family.”
But what we want to do is play an opposite where, could it be that she might be nice? Or could it be that Amani is seeing things? That was the conversation we were having early on. It’s up until the end that we really see her. But in the beginning, we really want to have that contrast of, “Hey, what if? What if she is good? What if she just really fell in love with Khaled?”
Because ultimately, he’s the guy. I always say in making this one, he is the guy who made the mistake. This is not against polygamy or anything. There’s no choice to it. There were no conversations about it. Khaled did it the wrong way. But I think with Zahra, I wanted to play it a bit softer. I wanted to make it more, hey, what if it’s not your fault? It’s part of our culture and religion. We agreed to it, but he just did it the wrong way.
Rebecca Elliott:
I only have time for one more quick question. What’s next for you? I guess you were planning this one 10 years ago, so what are you planning for 10 years from now?
Majid Al Ansari:
I definitely want to do something a bit lighter. Definitely in genre. Maybe it could be zombies, maybe it could be vampires. The Vile took a lot from me because it was more personal. It’s a very delicate subject matter within our culture. It was just a lot of weight on me. So I think with the next one, I want to do something that I can relate to and that will be a part of our culture. But something a bit lighter. Something in the genre space but in the fun space too, I think.
Rebecca Elliott:
Well, good. I look forward to your horror comedy next! All right. Thank you so much for making time for this today. I really appreciate it. Good luck at the festival.
Majid Al Ansari:
Thank you. Take care.
The Vile is screening at Fantastic Fest on September 20th and 24th at the flagship Alamo Drafthouse location in Austin, TX.
