This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, COBWEB being covered here wouldn’t exist.
There lives a frightened young boy inside a foreboding old home. Bright tempting pumpkins dot the yard, evoking autumnal imagery ripe for Halloween fun. But the boy and his family do not celebrate Halloween. No, it’s forbidden. And inside this fortress of a home, with the banned holiday rapidly approaching, the boy one night hears a knocking on his bedroom wall. Knock. Knock. Knock. Scared, yet intrigued, the boy can’t help but wonder what the source of the knocking is. Thus, COBWEB sets the stage for a prime-time Halloween terror.
Directed by Samuel Bodin and written by Chris Thomas Devlin, COBWEB is an eerie tale that seems otherwise timeless. Framed like a story you would tell on Halloween night, the film focuses on 8-year-old Peter (Woody Norman). He is an imaginative and lonely boy. As shown throughout the film, his parents through a mixture of gaslighting, helicopter parenting, and cruelty keep him isolated away from others. The other children pick up on his loneliness. He is the perfect bully’s victim.
Everything shifts for him when he hears a knock on his wall. His parents through various methods try to convince him that it’s all in his head. But soon, a voice starts to speak to him through the wall. Is it a cure for his loneliness? Does he finally have a friend? As Peter’s insistence amplifies, so do his parents’ manipulations. This tug of war culminates in a shocking third act that could easily polarize viewers.
A coming-of-age corruption tale
Cobwebs can conceal things left hidden by time. When brushed away, all can be revealed. It is here that Devlin explores hidden depths through brilliant character development and twists and turns. We’re constantly left guessing what is going on with Peter’s parents, Mark and Carol. This is helped partially by the performances delivered by Antony Starr and Lizzy Caplan.
Antony Starr plays someone with deep rage and a need for control. No one can doubt at any moment, he could snap. Caplan’s performance oscillates between being awkward, cold, and sickeningly sweet. However, there’s something unintentionally off in her delivery that doesn’t always work. She’s a woman on edge trying too hard, but there’s a Mid-Atlantic affectation that’s coming across that doesn’t quite land. In fact, it distracts more often than blends in.
Regardless, these two together make for a distrustful pair. It’s no wonder that when positive influences enter Peter’s life and begin to point out the flaws in his parents that he starts to doubt and question. But, having never been allowed to interact with others, Devlin points a finger at how easily this type of parenting sets children like Peter up for failure.
We all know kids like Peter. We all know parents like Mark and Carol. While COBWEB is a coming-of-age tale of lost innocence for Peter, this is also a cautionary tale for us all. If offered kindness and true love, children can flourish. If not, we set them up for a long, hard road.
COBWEB twists too far
This leads to an otherwise polarizing big reveal. The breadcrumbs have been placed. But there has always been a hint of something otherworldly and magical that might be taking place in Peter’s house. Perhaps there is more behind his parents’ actions that can justify this fear. Instead, it requires a suspension of belief that isn’t built into the overall execution.
That’s not to say that it isn’t exhilarating to watch things play out. Devlin’s screenplay and Bodin’s impeccable mastery of finding the optimum scares and dialing up to eleven make it so that audiences are on edge throughout COBWEB. But, had another explanation been given for what was happening behind the home’s walls, it might have been easier to swallow than the final revelation.
The ending also feels rather abrupt. It’s as if a door is closed shut in our faces when it seemed like there was about a couple minutes more time that could have been used to let things settle. In some ways, the ending itself loops back to the cautionary element of the overarching storyline. We never know what happens behind closed doors. Stronger story-related choices could have maximized the overall impact here or perhaps made it easier to digest in the end.
A visually pleasing Halloween vibe
What helps in setting the tone and ambiance of COBWEB is the overall visual aesthetic. Literally, the film is peak Halloween vibes. So much so that it seems like an odd choice to drop such a fall-centric horror on the same weekend as tentpole flicks, Barbie and Oppenheimer. But I digress.
There’s a timelessness to the production and costume design. Peter’s home feels trapped in stasis. Through the usage of burnt orange and earthy tones, we see this family is decaying from the inside out. It also evokes that fairytale Halloween quality that COBWEB taps into story-wise.
Cinematographer Philip Lozano captures this quality with his lens, making great use of angles and light to accentuate the terror and anxiety that Peter feels. We’re also able to see all the hard work put into Alan Gilmore’s production design within the house. From the basement to hidden passageways and more, there’s no detail spared in creating this memorably creepy house.
The thing about cobwebs is even when you brush them away, there’s always something that lingers. That is the feeling that comes as the end credits start to roll. COBWEB is something you can’t quite shake off. Even if there are some issues in execution, Devlin’s script is full of creepy twists and turns that will leave audiences guessing until the very end. It’s not often a film these days that manages to make me go “Oh, wow!” and this one did just that.
Lionsgate will be releasing COBWEB in theaters on July 21, 2023.
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