Who’s That Knocking in the Creepy First Trailer for Horror Movie Cobweb?

To a horror geek, it often seems like there are new trailers for random studio horror films dropping online on a daily basis, and few of them immediately stand out if you even bother to pause long enough to hit the play button. Given that reality, it’s a compliment to say that this first trailer for Cobweb actually does look quite promising, featuring a sterling cast and some uncanny visuals. It’s enough to make us wonder why we haven’t heard much about the film before this, given the rapidly approaching July 21, 2023 release date. Also, please note: There’s a second highly anticipated South Korean film from director Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil) coming out in 2023, likewise titled Cobweb. This is not that movie.

No, this movie is a classic child endangerment/questionable parenting tale from first-time director Samuel Bodin, from a 2018 Black List selection script by writer Chris Thomas Devlin. We would say that’s a promising background, except for the fact that Devlin also wrote last year’s terrible Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot–here’s hoping that Cobweb is indeed the man’s superior work. One area the film is certainly doing well is in its casting, as it can boast Lizzy Caplan and The Boys‘s Antony Starr as the not-creepy-at-all parents of a young boy (Woody Norman) who has begun to hear concerning sounds in the walls on a nightly basis. Surely Mom and Dad have nothing to hide, right? Or as the official synopsis puts it:

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?

Conventional? Certainly. But judging from the trailer below, both Bodin’s direction and the film’s cinematography look like they could be a cut above recent, similar fare such as The Boogeyman. We’ll be keeping an eye on Cobweb as it arrives this July.