This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Cobweb is a horror movie that follows young boy Peter as he discovers that there is something his parents are hiding about themselves and their house. Starring Woody Norman, Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, and Cleopatra Coleman, Cobweb does its best to keep you guessing.
To start, this movie has a great cast. Antony Starr and Lizzy Caplan are able to capture a slightly unhinged energy that play into the mystery of the plot. They play the protective parents of Peter (Norman) and as he begins to question their motives, they play into the questionable behaviors.
Woody Norman does a great job as our lead surrogate. His interactions with the presence in the walls were very unsettling and he does a good job being an understandable character. Cleopatra Coleman has popped up in a few of my recent movie watches and she is always a pleasant watch. Her role as the teacher who looks out for Peter may have been done before in other movies (Antlers) but she’s still easy to root for.
The plot is, for the most part, good before it takes a complete left turn in the final act. Peter hears a voice in his walls that tells him he can’t trust his parents and we see them begin to act strangely. Naturally, I thought that Cobweb‘s story was going to go down that path, kind of like 2015’s The Visit. Even with the twist in the end, I was truly not prepared for what came next. Honestly, I’m not sure I like just how outrageous it went. It was reminiscent of how Barbarian or Malignant completely flipped the script on the viewer but I just didn’t like it as much.
I think part of it is the visual aspects. I can’t spoil anything but the way the film looks in the first two acts compared to the last is night and day.
The scares in Cobweb were decent enough. Some got me better than others, but they all were pretty standard jump scares. The gore, however, was very well done. The third act gets very bloody and it’s with characters you’d hope would be on the receiving end, so it gets my stamp of approval.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For whatever reason, Cobweb feels like it received no promotion. The only reason I knew about it before it came on VOD was because of a trailer reaction video on youtube. It’s making its rounds on TikTok now but with a cast of legit names, I’m surprised I didn’t see more trailers or hype. It is a decent movie with some good unnerving tension. It’s a wild ride but it’s worth it if you can suspend your disbelief.
