Cobweb (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – Eight-year-old Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant tap, tap from inside his bedroom wall – a tapping that his parents insist is all in his imagination. As Peter’s fear intensifies, he believes that his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) could be hiding a terrible, dangerous secret and questions their trust. And for a child, what could be more frightening than that?

My Take – Also released this weekend alongside the history making double feature #Barbenheimer is this Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg co-produced horror thriller helmed by Samuel Bodin in his directorial debut, which at first glance immediately echoed similarity to last year’s surprise hit Barbarian (2022).

And though director Bodin proved with the Netflix series ‘Marianne’ that he knows his way around distressing and volatile horror atmospheres, unfortunately this time around he is letdown by a script from writer Chris Thomas Devlin (2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre) that can’t deliver on its promises, and a third act that spins violently out of control.

Sure, the first hour of the film accomplishes what it sets out to. It is scary and intense, suspenseful and creepy. Those watching are forced to come up with all sorts of theories while having no idea what is actually happening, that is until everything that works so well is upended in its third act, when the film pivots to another kind of horror entirely and simply can’t support the domestic dread of the first two-thirds.

Up until that point the film is calculated, but then it molds into a bonkers feature that gives us a silly looking monster and a multitude of deaths that don’t ever feel earned. To add to that the film ends abruptly, leaving viewers with many questions that may never get answered.

Set a week before Halloween, the story follows Peter (Woody Norman), a young boy bullied in elementary school and rattled by noises in the walls of his room at night. Though his mother Carol (Lizzy Caplan) teases him for an over-active imagination and his father Mark (Anthony Starr) passes off the racket as the work of rats, Peter is convinced rats don’t whisper in the voice of a girl (Ellen Dubin).

Rats don’t pass on warnings about his overprotective parents, who won’t even let Peter go trick-or-treating, claiming it is because of a girl who went missing in the neighborhood while doing so, and years before he was born. Rats don’t coach Peter how to deal with the bullies at school. Surely Peter doesn’t know his parents as well as he thinks.

Director Samuel Bodin has a lot of elements at play here. The best part of the film is the set up and the mystery. For the first hour we have no real idea of what is going on. There are signs, sure, but nothing is ever proven. This ambiguity allows us to come up with all sorts of theories, and keeps us around so that we can find out if we are right or not. Here, director Bodin invokes dread with long shots of the film’s few distinctive set elements, but he doesn’t do much to render those images as something powerful or sinister.

For a good chunk of the film’s 88-minute run time, it seems like it’s building to a revelation about the parents. But one of the glaring issues within that theme is that the film doesn’t leave much room for ambiguity. Carol and Mark are uncomfortably creepy and before we even get to the mystery person in the wall, there’s a loss of all questioning about what is wrong with them because you already hate the parents. Like they punish Peter by grounding him by locking him in this creepy basement.

However, given what occurs in the third act, perhaps no one is. A third act that pivots to another kind of horror entirely, abruptly trading the palpable fear of a child whose parents may be secretly sinister for a goofier monster feature.

It also hurts that he relies increasingly on Norman‘s pipsqueak performance and the truth behind the voices he’s been hearing, the chaos on display isn’t exciting. The editing isn’t always precise or clean, and the screenplay rushes to the finish line with an ending that seems developed on the spot.

On the other hand, Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr are amusingly unhinged. They are the right amount of creepy and caring. At times you can even, sort of, see where they are coming from. Starr exudes that signature Homelander charm, provoking palpable unease despite a charismatic facade that paints Mark as the perfect father.

Caplan leans all the damn way into her portrayal of Carol, skittish and of unstable mental faculties. Cleopatra Coleman is wonderful in her supporting role as well. On the whole, ‘Cobweb’ is a middling horror effort that succumbs to its lofty ambitions and puzzling story choices.