The Overlooked Cobweb Is a Well-Crafted, Future Halloween Cult Classic

Only a week before its release was the first time I became aware of the existence of Samuel Bodin’s Cobweb, and that’s perfectly indicative of why the film came and went from theaters with extremely limited fanfare. A horror film dropped with little marketing into the dog days of summer to break up blockbuster season isn’t such an uncommon occurrence, but Cobweb proved to be uniquely unlucky in where Lionsgate ultimately chose to unleash it. The date was July 21, 2023. Or as it is now known in industry lore: Barbenheimer Ground Zero.

Suffice to say, Cobweb had no chance, being washed away in a pink tidal wave of pop feminism and atomic hellfire, quickly consigned to the VOD dustbin. Even at the best of times, a directorial debut of an original horror concept without any established IP or M3GAN-esque meme potential can be a hard sell in terms of enticing audiences. In this particular moment, Cobweb’s relative quality didn’t matter a bit. All the air had been sucked out of the room.

And that’s a shame, because Cobweb (now streaming on Hulu) is a nifty, brisk little horror yarn that spotlights a very promising directorial presence, a combination of artistry and cinematography that is able to elevate an extremely familiar story and breathe new life into hoary old tropes. It features fine performances, arrestingly stylized visuals and an always nice to see 88-minute runtime. And did I mention that it’s also Halloween as all get-out? Not since the likes of the beloved Trick ‘r Treat have I seen a film with such a preponderance of pumpkins and Jack-o’-Lanterns, anchoring Cobweb firmly in the heart of the autumn season. This movie may be overlooked now, but don’t be surprised if five or 10 years from now it’s being perennially mentioned as a Halloween classic.

Bodin’s feature debut–he also directed French horror series Marianne–is from a screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin, an entry on the 2018 Black List, though it’s really not the film’s screenplay that makes it stand apart. If anything, the premise of Cobweb seems distressingly familiar: A shy 8-year-old boy named Peter (Woody Norman) lives a lonely life in a creaky, impossibly large home with his oddly stern and formal parents Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr). Harassed by the kind of misanthropic bullies at school that are drawn to horror films like fruit flies to vinegar, his existence goes from “anxiety riddled” to positively panicked when he begins to hear nightly scratching and knocks from the walls of his bedroom. His parents, naturally, deny the existence of the sounds and insist that he is willfully–naughtily–inventing them himself. So of course, he can’t tell them what is going on when a child’s voice starts whispering to him through the wall, accusing dear old Mom and Dad of terrible crimes. Is Peter insane? Or is he about to be?

At this point, you’ve likely concluded: “Ah, so it’s another ‘monster in the walls’ movie,” something we’ve seen explored not long ago via the likes of Barbarian. And to be certain, there’s an element of The People Under the Stairs here, but there are also twists of Let the Right One In to be found in Peter’s isolation and potential psychotic awakening, not to mention more than a little Malignant and Don’t Breathe in the shockingly gonzo transformation of Cobweb’s unhinged third act. Suffice to say, where the first 60 minutes of Cobweb get by on genuinely eerie atmosphere, the final 30 minutes are another beast entirely.

No, what makes Cobweb actually stand out is largely the eye of Bodin and cinematographer Philip Lozano, both of whom work in conjunction to draw us into the dreamy, borderline surreal setting of this suburban fairytale, where a dark, rotting core lies buried just beyond the edges of perception. Critical to framing the film is the decision to effectively present everything from an 8-year-old’s perspective: Not literally, in terms of line of sight, but conceptually and metaphorically. We perceive the world as this nerve-wracked little boy attempts to parse it, with his parents as imposing and mysteriously unknowable strangers who seem to hold some grudge against him that he can’t possibly understand. Everything has the stylized air of childhood fantasy, the sense that an overactive imagination has twisted familiar objects into strange and off-putting shapes. Not everything makes logical sense. The very landscape of Peter’s home is like a dreamscape, complete with a backyard pumpkin patch choked with black mold, strangling itself in its desire to live and grow beyond the bounds of this clearly haunted house. Guillermo del Toro would love the place.

Granted, the film is absolutely stuffed with genre cliches of the last two decades, particularly in the form of the ham-fisted attempts at assistance offered by Peter’s empathetic substitute teacher (Cleopatra Coleman), who at one point brings a classroom drawing to the house literally emblazoned with “HELP ME” in crayon. The temptation to roll one’s eyes is strong, but even scenes like these, which we’ve seen in a hundred similar films in recent memory, manage to crackle with a palpable sense of suspense thanks to their editing and the menace-laden performances of Caplan and Starr, who respectively stew in flustered indignation and barely repressed physicality. The trio walk a delicate tightrope–teacher probing after the wellbeing of the child, and parents all but insinuating that she could be seconds away from finding out exactly where he is, if she doesn’t leave well enough alone. Cobweb teases its threats of violence with supreme patience, making it all the more satisfying when things finally erupt. You can certainly see why they cast the likes of Starr, so known as he is for the portrayal of psychopathic superhero Homelander on The Boys.

It’s this consistent ability of Bodin to subtly tweak familiar tropes that keeps Cobweb interesting, that gives it an unexpected spark of vitality that the cynical horror fan in the audience probably wouldn’t see coming. Even its jump scares aren’t presented quite as one expects them to be, sometimes with tweaks as simple as delaying the timing of a payoff the audience expects to arrive a little bit sooner. In Cobweb, everything tired is somehow made fresh again. The film manages to demonstrate the value that existed in many of these tropes all along, before our familiarity with them bred contempt. For the lifelong horror fan, that’s an oddly comforting experience.

In a perfect world, Cobweb would have arrived in theaters in early October, with a genuine ad campaign behind it, and been carried by word of mouth into being a modest hit, launching director Bodin toward bigger and more ambitious projects where he can hopefully continue to demonstrate serious talent behind the camera. It sure as hell wouldn’t have been the third wheel in a cultural event the size of Barbenheimer, but despite this I still have a feeling that this is one of those movies that will continue to find “its people” now that it’s entered the streaming sphere on a major service. There’s just something about it–a verve and understanding of what it is that helps it to rise above what could easily have been a rote, soulless affair.

And so, before Halloween arrives, horror fans owe it to themselves to discover Cobweb. This cult is likely just getting started.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s resident horror guru. You can follow him on Twitter for much more film content.