Horrorfest 2023: Cobweb

Cobweb

Written by Chris Thomas Devlin

Directed by Samuel Bodin

Starring Lizzy Caplan, Woody Norman, Cleopatra Coleman and Antony Starr

USA, 2023

Let's end Horrorfest 2023 on a high note with COBWEB, a movie the guys at Red Letter Media said they liked, so when it popped up on streaming, I checked it out right away -- because those hack frauds never like anything.

It will be difficult to talk about COBWEB without giving too much away because part of what makes it so great is that you never know exactly where it's going. As it starts out, it is apparent that it is about a lonely elementary-school-aged boy (Woody Norman) who is picked on at school and over-protected at home. One evening, he hears noises in the wall of his bedroom, including a voice, and it scares him. His parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) reassure him it's nothing, but he keeps hearing it.

The smart thing is, in these early passages, the parents seem reasonable. There are a couple shots or moments where you might think they're slightly off, but nothing that's a huge red flag. And then the movie swiftly pulls the rug out from under you and moves in a direction you weren't expecting. At least, it was one that I wasn't expecting. And it keeps doing that, throughout.

The young boy his a little bit of an ally in his kind substitute teacher (Cleopatra Coleman) who can tell he is sensitive and needs special attention, and intuits that there might be something worse going on behind the scenes than meets the eye. At first you're not sure if she's overreacting or if the parents are or what. Hell, early on, it's not even clear if this movie is going to be about something supernatural or something... else.

Anyway, it gets pretty much everything right -- the performances are great, including the child in the lead role who has a big job ahead of him, holding almost the entire movie on his shoulders. The atmosphere is also great, not in an over-produced, big budget way where it takes away from the scares (like MALIGNANT) but more in a classic Universal horror kind of way, where there's a sense of moody foreboding in every shot. And, the screenplay is endlessly inventive. This isn't a "big premise" movie where you go in for the premise and then that's all you get. This one seems to have a new premise every ten minutes or so, and that works to its advantage.

I'm probably not doing the movie justice for how good it is, so I'll just say it's definitely worth checking out, especially on Halloween, which reminds me -- Happy Halloween!