Studio: Lionsgate
Director: Samuel Bodin
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Producer: Roy Lee, Andrew Childs, Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, James Weaver, Josh Fagen
Stars: Lizzy Caplan, Woody Norman, Cleopatra Coleman, Antony Starr, Luke Busey, Jay Rincon
Review Score:
Summary:
Influenced by an eerie voice from behind his bedroom wall, a troubled young boy begins to suspect his parents may be hiding a horrifying secret.
Review:
In 2043, or whenever movie websites do their usual anniversary retrospectives on a particular year in cinema (assuming internet media still exists in its current form, of course), the summer of 2023 will be popularly remembered as the time when Barbenheimer blew up the box office. Some horror fans, on the other hand, may instead use the theatrical thrillers that failed during this same period as another specious talking point in the dubious debate over release dates.
It's funny how, without fail, a stacked October full of more fright films than any one person could possibly watch always ignites the perennial question, "Why do distributors only release new horror movies around Halloween? We consume this content year-round!" Except when films like "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" and "Cobweb" drop out of the Top Ten like hot rocks after one or two weekends in July or August, some of those same voices see the low turnout and instead ask, "Well, why didn't they release this movie around Halloween?" Pick a lane, people.
They may have a point about "Cobweb" though. The film takes place over the seven days leading up to and including horror's highest holiday, with kids in costumes, plenty of pumpkins, and a finale featuring troublesome trick-or-treaters all occupying scenery. By any metric, "Cobweb" IS a "Halloween movie." Nevertheless, I still don't see how a different month of the year would have made an appreciable difference in viewers largely treating it as an average chiller.
Rather than blaming misfired marketing or a studio's seemingly poor understanding of the calendar for "Cobweb's" disappointing ticket sales, I'd prefer to posit a different theory. Maybe the movie barely blipped on a general audience's radar because it's only formulaic fright fare. Maybe, just maybe, it simply wasn't worth a burdensome drive to an AMC, paying $1X per person, and putting up with the nuclear glow of every talkative teenager's iPhone to watch the same brand of standard suspense that streaming services burp up on a weekly basis.
I'm not saying "Cobweb" is bad. It isn't. I'm also not saying it's poorly made. It certainly isn't. I'm just saying, "Meh, why would I want to go to a theater for this?"
When you can actually see through the thick shadows that blanket just about every frame, "Cobweb" essentially looks good, as the cinematography crafts copious audiovisual creeps. Especially in its opening sequence, "Cobweb" channels plenty of relatable chills we all experienced in the dark of our childhood bedrooms. Unexplained scratching noises within the walls. Clock hands whose ticks amplify deafening silence in between. Creaking ropes swinging outside. Sharp scrapes against the side of the house. Wind causing a screen door to rattle on rusty hinges. "Cobweb" becomes a show-and-tell for all of the sounds and shapes that inevitably scare imaginative children, kind of like "Skinamarink" (review here) tried to do, except "Cobweb" has an actual story.
Although the spooks can be subtle, the characterizations are anything but. Pulling from the pages of "Joan Crawford's Big Book of B-Movie Acting," Lizzy Caplan puts on a "play to the back row" performance that could substitute for a spiral-cut ham at a holiday dinner. As the overprotective mother to Peter, a sheltered young boy slowly driven to dirty deeds by a mysterious girl's voice behind his wall, Caplan plays Carol with such exaggerated Puritan poise that she drips with suspicion from the word "go." Understated, she is not.
Through less fault of his own, Antony Starr meets Caplan at the same summit so they can go over the top together as Peter's peculiar parents. Already unable to be unseen as the smugly unstable timebomb Homelander on "The Boys," the film does Starr no favors in the "oh, he could be a good guy" department by immediately framing him as highly likely to be hiding something sinister. I'm not sure "Cobweb" ever really intends for anyone to think Carol and Mark might be merely misunderstood, or that the wicked words being whispered to Peter about them could be at least partially untrue. But any possible doubts are quickly smashed to pieces when the camera does something like putting Starr in silhouette so he can ominously warn Peter to "be careful, not everything is as sweet as it seems."
The savior yin to Carol and Mark's "fooling no one" yang is Miss Devine, a teacher occupying the required role of concerned adult that all such stories about troubled children in supernatural situations have. She's actually a substitute at Peter's school, which explains away why she has no prior history with Peter, and why she might suddenly get involved in a personal matter she would have handled differently as a permanent faculty member. Cryptic warning signs hint at a figurative fire smoldering at his home, so Miss Devine takes a couple of carefully spaced-out trips to Peter's dark house, where literally every room appears to be in dire need of brighter lightbulbs, before gradually growing into his sole hope for survival.
When it becomes clear that Peter's parents are protecting a different secret than what we're initially led to think, "Cobweb" hits a logic hurdle that gives its believability a big bruise. As in, it becomes abundantly evident that the boy is on a collision course with a shocking truth Carol and Mark are desperate to keep buried. And yet they do absolutely nothing to prevent him from finding out more, instead pretending that everything eerie is all in his head when they know perfectly well what true danger has finally presented itself. Horror films like "Saw" and "Malignant" (review here) have had implausible twists that unexpectedly made those movies better because of how ridiculously fun they ended up being. "Cobweb's" reveal leans too heavy toward the ridiculous and too far from the fun.
Predictably plotted fiction aside, "Cobweb" hits many of the basic notes for a safe composition of creeps and boos. I'd expect nothing less from director Samuel Bodin, the guy who gave us the unjustly underseen series "Marianne," which comes with a big thumb up for whatever my recommendation is worth. Bodin is certainly seasoned in scariness. There's just nothing novel to "Cobweb" that would raise the hackles of a fan who's equally familiar with filmic frights. "Cobweb" may indeed be a "Halloween movie," but it's a lot of old tricks with very few new treats.
Review Score: 55
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.