Cobweb (2023 film)

Category: Creature horror

Directed by: Samuel Bodin

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The Ring meets Home Alone meets Longlegs - this was my impression as I got watching up this creature horror starring Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, Woody Norman and Cleopatra Coleman.

And quite surprising is that Seth Rogen, known for his comic acting, was actually a producer of this film!

Can he make a horror? Let's find out after the plot!

The plot:

Peter (Norman) is the son of Carol and Mark (Caplan and Starr) who raise him in the suburbs of somewhere cold America (where is never specified, though I think somewhere north-east) in a large, creaky old house, but are emotionally distant and far from nurturing. Alongside this, Peter is having problems with a bully at school, Brian (Luke Busey), though the growing bond bewteen Peter and his teacher, Miss Devine (Coleman) helps.

However, Peter's biggest problem is that at night, he hears what initially begins as tapping from behind his bedroom wall which then becomes a voice he starts having conversations which that his parents brush off as being the result of an overly active child's imagination.

All the while, Carol and Mark are haunted by the memory of a young girl that went missing during Halloween trick-or-treating years ago.

The story picks up when a somewhat disturbing drawing Peter does for Halloween classwork alarms Miss Divine who takes it upon herself to visit Peter's house where she meets Carol. Carol brushes off Miss Divine's concerns and Peter is reprimanded by his parents for telling his teacher about the delusions he is having of a voice behind the wall.

Things escalate as Brian destroys Peter's Halloween pumpkin after class one day, the voice behind the wall to encouraging Peter to take matters into his own hands. To this effect, Peter pushes Brian down a set of stairs at school, causing Brian a broken leg and Peter to be expelled.

As punishment for telling his parents that he heard "her", he is grounded which means not only is he not allowed out of the house, he is locked up in the basement. While in the basement, he discovers a grate that leads to a pit where he sees a face looking back at him. Miss Divine's unease at Peter being absent from school causes her to use his maths test as an excuse to visit Peter's house as a way of surreptitiously passing on her phone number. While here, she meets Mark who comes across as friendly, but threatening, and the conversation between the three adults causes Carol to descend in to anger just as Peter bangs on the walls to try get Miss Divine's attention.

Peter is eventually released from the basement, but is railroaded in to a forced confession which pushes him further away emotionally from his parents and closer to the voice behind the wall that tells Peter that she is his sister and that their parents are evil. The discovery of a skull in the back yard causes even more tension, leading Peter to try call Miss Divine for help. 

Carol discovers Peter's hole in his bedroom wall, meaning the jig is up and Mark becomes even more distant and threatening to Peter. The next night, Peter poisons family dinner, causing Mark to die in one of the most gross expulsions of bodily fluids seen in recent cinema. Carol dies shortly afterwards from a tumble down the stairs with a knife (along with some wretching and gagging for good measure). Her final ominous words to Peter are "don't let her out", which Peter promptly disobeys as it hits him that he he has released a monster - literally. But what's this? Out of the blue come Brian and his cousins to pay a house visit, dressed in masks and carrying weapons to get payback for what Peter did to Brian (who still needs crutches).

Having literally stumbled across a murder scene, the foursome smash things up around the house while Peter hides from BOTH his antagonists and his sister who we see has the ability to climb along walls and manhandle people with ease - an ability she puts to good use by ripping the visitors apart. With the bullies now taken care of, the sister comes back to Peter for some good old-fashioned exposition - the sister was born hideously deformed and instead of being killed, the dad built a pit to put her in. Over the years, the girl learned how to climb and crawl (explaining how she can traverse walls with little effort, as well as why she was behind the walls of the house). It also turns out that the skull found in the backyard was from a little girl who came to Peter's house for trick-or-treating and was killed to prevent her from getting help for the sister - hence why Carol is so hung-up whenever the death is mentioned.

But all good expositions must come to an end as the sister uses her insane athleticism to put Peter behind the wall and lock him up, right before Miss Divine turns up at the house. Peter yells at Miss Devine to run, which she dutily ignores. Miss Devine breaks down the wall in Peter's bedroom and they both try make a run for it, but right before Peter steps outside, he is grabbed (yet again) by his sister and is put in the pit where he finds a teddy bear (with human teeth) and a label of Sarah on the back.

Miss Devine still hasn't given up and walks down into the basement, following Peter's screaming. Just as Sarah is about to kill a defenseless Miss Devine, Peter Rapunzels his way up the pit which conveniently gives Miss Divine the chance to kick her, and to that end, Peter makes his way out and they put Sarah back in - but not without the foreboding warning that Sarah won't be held back and that she'll always be with him.

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Phew! That was scary! There is a great and constant sense of unease in this movie that barely lets up.

Caplan and Starr are excellent as a married couple who care, but with something that just seems off about them. The character of Mark, particularly in the scene when he's walking Miss Devine out to the front door while carrying a hammer - yikes! Woody Norman performed his role with aplomb and I bought him as a child cowed by the circumstances of his upbringing as well as his school situation. But most surprising of all was Cleopatra Coleman as Miss Devine, Peter's caring and brave teacher. It turns out the Coleman is actually Australian, something you'd never know by her performance here.

All in all - great acting!

Effects were pretty good. I loved the expulsion of bodily fluids at the end with both the dad and the cousins, and even Carol's death was quite wince inducing. Though I will mention that the digital effects didn't always work - the one that stood out was a shot of Peter looking down onto the lower floor and seeing a shadow of Sarah walking away. The shadow indicates movement, but the way the effect was done revealed it was digitally created, which actually took away from the scene. A minor quibble, though.

The cinematography was REALLY good, as well as the sound production. Clangs, bangs, scrapes, breaks - all in all, great production!

But we need to talk about Sarah.

I didn't mind Sarah as the underlying cause of tension and fear in the movie - that is not in doubt - but there were some aspects of her character that didn't work, and not only didn't work, but didn't work to the point that it keeps this movie at Great and stops it from being Best In Class.

First are the two face reveals at the end. The second and better one is when Sarah is about to kill Miss Devine who is backed up against a wall. Here we see that Sarah has a human face, but one that wears the years of abuse and lack of sunlight - THIS was really good and it makes you feel sympathy for Sarah as a victim of parental neglect. And this is in stark contrast to the earlier face reveal to Peter while he's in the pit. That face was clearly a computerised effect that just didn't have a sense of menace or dread. Sure, it looked hideous, but didn't come across as anything remotely realistic to the point of detriment.

The second point is that I'm disappointed we never see Sarah speak - her voice is always dubbed over, even in interactive dialogue. It just comes across as weird where Sarah is trying to tell Peter the horrible truth, but we never get it directly from her mouth, instead getting this gravelly voice playing over montage clips. And further to this, I get that Sarah uses a young girl voice to be able to win Peter's trust, but I didn't like the voice they used as her "natural" voice. This voice comes across as "cranky old woman with a pack a day habit" rather than "young girl trapped in a basement for years". So to that end, I just didn't buy Sarah as an underdeveloped monster coming to take revenge. I bought Sarah as a monster - that's the premise of the story - but her grammar and vocabulary were that of an adult. If she has been kept in a pit for years, how the heck did she learn to speak so well?

If I was director, what would I have done? I would have kept the character of Sarah as a young girl in both form and function because for me, the idea of a young girl both able and willing to kill makes it even scarier. This is why Orphan and M3GAN worked.

The last point I have is small, but not unnoticed - the gender imbalance in the violence. Sarah seemingly has no problems killing and manhandling male targets, ripping them apart with ease and causing them to gush blood and other bodily fluids. But for Miss Divine, the most Sarah can do is scratch her leg which causes her to fall over? Oh dear!

There is something to be said about the weaponising of the trust of children, but also the consequences of abusing the trust of children. This movie does it fairly well.

I definitely recommend this movie. Great stuff. Great pacing. But the issues with Sarah's characterisation keep this at Great.

STAR RATING: 4/5