If there’s one thing the horror genre does particularly well, its screwing over the mythos of the healthy, all-American family unit into something decidedly more sinister. From the perverted versions of family from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hill Have Eyes, to traditional values under assault from Hereditary and The Exorcist, no heart warming view of a loving household is too cherished not to torpedo with a burst of good, old fashioned terror, be it from within or without.
The latest movie to lock this subject within its merciless crosshairs is Cobweb, a directorial debut by Samuel Bodin that seemingly plays up on that childhood belief that your parents are caring, benevolent givers of love that would never allow them to come to harm. But what if your parents aren’t as normal as you first thought – what if they have a terrible secrets that’s managed to creep into the very foundations of the place you all call home?
Peter is a shy, subdued child that suffers bullying at school and gas lighting at home thanks to his incredibly uptight, overprotective parents who claim all the stringent rules they enforce on him is for his own good. It’s a strained and unsociable life for a child, but one day Peter finds relief from his endlessly tense life from two, incredibly diverse sources – the first is in the form of kind, understanding and aptly named substitute teacher Ms. Devine, who picks up on Peter’s anxious nature with understandable concern.
The second respite, on the other hand, takes the form of a disembodied girl’s voice that drifts through the wall of Peter’s bedroom that, while initially is obviously quite terrifying, soon gains the young boy’s trust as she gives out some uncomfortable harsh life advice. While initially cagey as to why there is a person living in the walls, the voice soon not only helps Peter with his bullying problem by talking him up until he gets the courage to stand up for himself, but she starts feeding him warnings about his own parents, hinting that all their claims about things being for his own good hold about as much water as a tissue paper bucket.
While Peter’s punishments get ever more severe, the girl in the wall urges Peter to release her before it’s too late and after an aborted attempt by Ms. Devine to try and sniff out any child abuse fails, Peter realises that maybe he needs to take matters into his own, timid hands.
However, while his parents are admittedly at least two cans short of a six-pack, what does Peter actually know about this being locked within the walls of his not-so-happy; is she a victim as she originally claims, or is his emotional distant parents that way for a reason?
Truth be told, even though I really enjoyed Cobweb for what it is, I had to wonder while I was watching it what director Samuel Bodin was actually shooting for from the moment he first called action. Not only is the script a puréed, mish mash of such home-based horrors as Wes Craven’s The People Under The Stairs, Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale Of Two Sisters, Thomas Alfredson’s, Let The Right One In and even Neil Gaiman’s Coraline as every creepy parent and creaky house trope in the book is sorted, shuffled and dealt out with an admittedly capable hand. However, while the familiar nature of the plot actually helps with some of the many “look behind you” moments of the film, Bodin seems uncertain as to which tone he’s supposed to be shooting for. While the movie’s first two thirds entertains itself greatly by approaching the concept in a style reminiscent of the output of A24 as it examines the nature of child abuse in a typically unnerving, almost fairy tale way that is all creeping camerawork, oppressive set design and oodles of mounting dread. However, once the cat is put of the bag and Cobweb’s secrets are revealed to the world, Bodin curiously shifts the flick into fourth gear and gives us a final act that bizarrely reminiscent of James Wan’s Malignant, hurling double-jointed maniacs this way and that, ending the movie on a overtly gory note that sort of undoes the lion’s share of his hard work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love creeping dread as much as I love twisty-limbed, decapitating wraths as the scamper up the side of a sheer wall, but if you’re going to shift from one to another midway through your movie, you need a better balance than seen here.
Still, if you don’t mind the jarring change of pace, Cobweb still has lots about it to cheer for with the performances in particular being notably strong and plainly sitting on the top of the pileare Lizzy Caplan and Anthony Starr. Caplan, a character actress of some renown, plays her flinty matriarch with a ram rod straight spine, clipped tones and an uneasy sense that under her clipped, Joan Crawford exterior, there’s some Bette Davis-style madness crawling out from within, she is magnificent as – believe it or not – the softer half of Peter’s sinister parentage. On the flip side, if wasnt already aware that Starr is creepily adept a playing seemingly forthright authority figures whole nothing plays behind the eyes, then you obviously haven’t been watching The Boys (which aldo shares Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg as producers) and he ably compliments his co-star. Everyone else does their jobs wonderfully with Woody Norman giving an impressively fearful performance for an eight year old and Cleopatra Coleman bringing some normalcy as the straight role of a caring teacher out of her depth.
Where Cobweb really excels, however, is the creepy, little details that make it crawl under your skin rather nicely. Be it the spiders that crawl around in the girl’s, excessively long hair, the massively effective Halloween setting or the cartoonish masks worn by the brutish teens during the weirdly out of place, home invasion subplot, Brodin keeps things nice and distinct which helps the movie paper over the more overfamilar cracks. Still, it’s obvious that the movie has gotten away from its creators in the end, with the extreme gore and doors that choose to suddenly slam on cue despite there being no actual supernatural manifestation at work straining the credibility to the limit.
Certainly a spirited debut, Brodin obviously has to work on his tonal issues with any future endeavors, but even though the creepy begining and the completely bonkers climax don’t entirely line up, each are staged in a high confident manner and feature performances that make you forgive a multitude of sins – except locking a creepy child within the walls, of course. That goes without saying.
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