Notable Cast: Woody Norman, Cleopatra Coleman, Lizzy
Caplan, Antony Starr, Luke Busey
At a brisk runtime of 88 minutes, Cobweb still took
at least 20 minutes for me to latch onto what it was doing. It was focused on
the 8-year-old protagonist, the acting for the family - including his mother
and father - felt four times larger than life, and the house they lived in felt
like an intentional set, particularly when compared to his school life outside
the home.
I had only seen the trailer once, but my assumption from the
trailer was that this film looked to capitalize on the “trauma horror” trend
currently running circles in the genre. Still, this - this opening of the film
all felt like it was two steps disconnected from reality in some heightened
way, and my brain was desperate to figure out the tonal intent. Twenty-ish
minutes in, it hit me like the clawed fingers of its spider-infested
antagonist. Cobweb is a fairy tale horror flick. Not some high-brow
artistic supernatural yarn. Duh.
Once I finally grasped what this film would be with its more
serious and realistic tone, I totally bought into it. Cobweb is a film
that embraces this other-worldly, Halloween-injected-fun-scare style, wrapped
in a fairy tale aesthetic, and is a tight, entertaining horror flick. It swirls
its audience into a kind of silliness not unlike James Wan’s Malignant did with
its blend and still manages to deliver just enough soul to sell the entire
thing. By the time the bonkers final act came ripping out, I was fully cocooned
in Cobweb - in all the best ways.
Told from the viewpoint of a young 8-year-old boy, Peter,
the film fully grabs onto a childlike innocence to its storytelling that revs
up the fairytale qualities of its plot and characters. Its narrative is fairly
straightforward as Peter’s strange family gets increasingly darker and more
sinister with each passing scene. The only other adult of the film, his teacher
Miss Devine, seems to be his only lifeline to a potentially dangerous home
life.
A fantastic performance by Woody Norman centers the film
with its audience so that as the plotting and narrative continually get
stranger and spiral further into the fantastical - ultimately taking a wild
second-half spin that changes the viewer’s understanding of the film’s world -
the viewer can buckle in for the ride.
The adults of the film are all broadly painted caricatures,
particularly compared to Peter, played by up-and-coming horror star Woody
Norman, giving a strong-centered performance, and it immediately provides this
film with a distance from reality. While the mom and dad (Lizzy Caplan and
Antony Starr, respectively) get to play out edgy paranoia and abrasive rule
layers with melodramatic pop, Cleopatra Coleman tends to steal the show here.
Her concerned substitute teacher’s intuition into Peter’s increasingly volatile
home life breaths a sense of focus to the increasing madness of its plotting.
She may end up being the film's highlight.
As the monstrous creature that lives in the house with Peter
becomes more and more of the forefront villain of the film, Cobweb
starts swinging further and further for its fairytale motifs. The second half
of the film is mainly dedicated to a vicious game of cat and mouse between our
protagonist and this long-fingered spider-like entity, and it’s shot with a
visual charisma by Samual Bodin that amplifies its tonalities. The more
information about its plotting that’s revealed, the further it moves into the
fantastical. It’s to the point that the choice to set the film around Halloween
only benefits its atmosphere and style. This continued spiral down into the
rabbit’s hole of surrealism will either leave viewers more invested or a little
distanced, but for me, it was a brilliant maneuver that hooked me in - even
when the film starts to bend its logistics to get to its goals.
Now that Spooky Season is upon us, it’s the right time of
year to really get caught up in Cobweb. Its seasonal setting,
atmospheric touches, and increasingly fantastical fairytale-esque narrative
make it a low-key big winner for the year.
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