In a time of overhyped too-minimalist horror films (“The Black Phone,” “Boogeyman”) and big-name franchises (the “Insidiouses” and “Conjurings”), “Cobweb” finds a nice middle ground. It has the familiar beats, like a scared kid (Woody Norman’s Peter) thinking there’s a monster in his room at night, and just a bit more.
Drawing mood from the Pennsylvania town of Hadleyfield – like Haddonfield but not quite — director Samuel Bodin’s Bulgaria-shot film features a rotting pumpkin patch. Perhaps it’s a comment on the decay of wise parenting and public schooling, although that’s probably generous. It doesn’t reach “Halloween” levels of scares, but it does plant hooks of revenge, mystery and a possible monster reveal.
A sticky mystery
Writer Chris Thomas Devlin (2022’s underrated “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) takes creepy horror tropes and fairy-tale standards and mixes them into a pumpkin-spicy concoction.
“Cobweb” (2023)
Director: Samuel Bodin
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Stars: Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, Cleopatra Coleman
A lot of the scares are things that are scary to kids, but not adults. This is where “Boogeyman,” for one, went wrong. Devlin uses “the monster in the closet” as a starting point, but smartly does not stop there. A mystery with real textual clues for mature viewers keeps the momentum going.
Effective parental turns come from Lizzy Caplan, whose Carol is slightly out of phase with normal behavior, and Antony Starr. I was hoping to see him as a purely nice guy to contrast with his delicious evil on “The Boys,” but no such luck: He’s a pretty bad dude here, too.
Young Norman is solid, though he doesn’t stand out from the horror pack of big-eyed kids with mops of dark hair. Peter’s teacher, Cleopatra Coleman’s Miss Devine, is the adult audience surrogate. There’s something a little off-putting about how most characters assume it’s wrong for Miss Devine to be concerned about her student. Shouldn’t interactions between teachers and parents be the norm?
The spiders and the fly
This town’s horror-film public school is like what real public schools are for some kids. Early scenes of Peter being bullied made me want to see the bullies get what they deserve – and then I immediately thought: “It’s a slick modern horror film; that won’t happen.” To the film’s credit, it kind of does, in the tense “Strangers”-esque finale.
One daring and gory sequence kicks off this grand finale, but the film goes to the credits when an epilog would’ve helped it. “Cobweb” had a potential path to greatness if Devlin had been willing to fully explain the previous behavior of the parents and the villain. What are the details? Who is to blame?
Leaving things as hints rather than fully chronicled narratives is a tried-and-true method in horror. It’s not the right choice for “Cobweb,” though. For one thing, the mystery had been guiding me through the film more so than the mood, so I wanted a resolution. For another, the lack of explanation means we can’t begin to decide who is to blame. Ambiguity is appealing only on a sturdier foundation of facts.
I safely escaped into sanity at the end because Devlin’s screenplay isn’t willing to land a final, freaky spider chomp. Still, “Cobweb” kept my attention stuck to the screen for 90 minutes, and that’s not something that can be said for all of today’s horror films.