Cobweb (2023) | Film Review

It’s a week before Halloween when we meet 8-year-old Peter. He’s a shy boy, a bit aloof, tormented by bullies at school, and his parents are odd. None of that is too unusual, except that Peter’s parents are very, very odd. They seem to isolate Peter, dance around serious conversations, and are paranoid about letting Peter trick-or-treat due to a little girl who went missing many years ago. Then Peter begins to hear scratching coming from within his bedroom walls, and this is where Cobweb truly begins.

Working off of Charles Thomas Devlin’s script, director Samuel Bodin quickly establishes himself as a director to watch in the horror genre. There is a nuanced, slow-build tension emanating from within Peter’s walls, and Bodin capitalizes on our own tricks of the mind as his story unfolds. Is the clawing real, or is Peter’s mind just that fractured due to his parents’ wildly unnatural caretaking?

The entire film is told essentially in three acts, with Bodin carefully delivering the first as largely passive. Details unravel a layer at a time, and there are moments in this section where you might find yourself wondering if you missed something crucial in the setup. Devlin’s script has no interest in spoon-feeding, nor in wasting time with unnecessary characters. This portion is built up, and once we round the corner into the second act – with Peter’s noises affecting his everyday actions – Cobweb finally shifts into gear.

It helps to have a stalwart pair of actors for Peter’s parents, Carol and Mark, who know how to crank up the emotional heft with the right tinge of insanity in Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr. Caplan has mastered manic and motherly at this point in her career, and Starr exudes that Homelander energy with the blink of his mentally unstable eyes. As Peter attempts to decipher his bedroom’s hidden secrets, Caplan and Starr delightfully captivate the audience with our never-ending questions in regard to how dastardly this pair could actually be? Cleopatra Coleman also delivers an admirable performance as Miss Devine, Peter’s substitute teacher, who takes an almost unhealthy approach to ensuring Peter’s safety, but truly the film belongs to Peter.

Resting a film on the shoulders of a child is always a dicey endeavor. Thankfully, Woody Norman is up to the task, as he emboldens Peter with enough pathos and insecurities to continuously foster our own doubts in what he thinks he sees and hears. Norman has quite the arc throughout Cobweb’s run, and the final act approaches Malignant levels of batshit crazy, but Peter remains in the audience’s sympathies even as he ups the stakes on his own mental gymnastics.

The first half of Cobweb takes a bit of a slow burn approach, but from that point on, it is a roller-coaster of thrills to the finish line. While it is always a pleasant surprise for an inventive horror film to hit in the summer, Cobweb seems a perfect staple to add to anyone’s annual Halloween viewing.

Listen to our full review of Cobweb on this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: