REVIEW: COBWEB

• Director: Samuel Bodin
• Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
• Stars: Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, Woody Norman, Cleopatra Coleman

Review

Something ain’t right with Peter (Norman). He keeps on hearing a knocking in his room. As the knocking intensifies, Peter begins to suspect that his parents might just be hiding a deep, dark secret from him.

The film begins a week before Halloween and it shows Peter as a withdrawn and picked on kid. His home life isn’t much better, his parents are at the very least weird and at worst they’re monsters. Peter’s mother, Carol (Caplan), is on edge seemingly almost permanently, and Dad (Starr) is so menacing that even a simple greeting feels like a veiled threat. When the knocking in Peter’s room intensifies, it begins to affect him even more at school, which brings his teacher Miss Devine (Coleman) to suspect that something isn’t right at home, then the knocking stops, and the voices start…

Cobweb is a beautifully shot film Cinematographer Philip Lozano keeping things dark with deep colours which makes the bright colours pop, making the most from the Halloween setting whilst Bodin directs the film in a way that keeps the story grounded until he gets unleashed in the 3rd act and shows off some fun tricks. Including what is one of the great jump scare sequences in a while, reminiscent of the famous jump scare in Bava’s Shock – that’s not giving it away at all, it just hit me in the same way that scene did.

Caplan, Starr, and Norman are all good as the family, despite Starr and Caplan being a little hamstrung by the script. To maintain the ‘are they or aren’t they?’ question the film poses throughout, Caplan’s character comes off as crazy, like, one or two steps below Aunt Martha in Sleepaway Camp crazy whilst Starr comes off as a very sinister father and given some of the decisions made by both parents the case could be made that whether they are hiding a dark secret or not, they just aren’t good parents. Norman is good as Peter, hitting the right notes and being a character than we can genuinely get behind. Whilst Coleman doesn’t get too much to do, she imbues her character with a sweetness that is lacking from every other adult in the film.

There is a twist (kinda) that I won’t spoil, and it goes far beyond the questioning of if Norman’s parents’ past deeds are real or imagined. I liked it, and personally, I thought it was a very well-timed reveal. The film isn’t overly long but the two issues I had were that it takes a bit too long to really get going and that it overstays its welcome, with at least three ending points in the film before the actual end. There is nothing wrong with the eventual ending of the film, but it would’ve been better served to edit it a touch more, even if the edits would make the film a bit more brutal. The violence in Cobweb all comes in a rush toward the end and it’s impactful without being over the top gory, in fact some of the better scenes are not the ones you see but the ones you hear.

Cobweb is an enjoyable thriller that you’ll definitely have some fun with.

Exclusively in Cinemas – July 21, 2023

Ryan Morrissey-Smith