‘Cobweb’ (2023) Review – An Instantly Memorable Mid-Summer Haunt

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Halloween in July! A patch of dreary pumpkins, hiding something sinister in their midst. Creaky doors, hidden hatches, a bevy of bumps in the night; Cobweb is the antidote for any horror fan painstakingly biding their time until all the ghouls and goblins creep out this fall. It’s the perfect film to pop in on Halloween night to bathe your home and head in the eerie fog of the holiday.

The film follows a young child who begins hearing knocks in the night, coming from the other side of his wall. The revelations that follow in his search for answers shape a story that stretches far beyond what the synopsis suggests.

Cobweb is terrifying beyond all expectations, spinning a narrative full of fear-inducing suggestions and silent jump-scares that rely on the visuals alone. Shades of Halloween 1978 shadow the front end of the film, with notes reminiscent of Insidious ringing nastily off the end. It may not reach the mountainous heights of those classics, but it comes closer than most films in the genre today.

Director Samuel Bodin allows every shot plenty of time to breathe, leaving you an uncomfortable amount of time to consider every dark bend in the space. Even at its scariest, the film is a careful, calculated exercise in a genre of horror past; every single shot has something to say, and you won’t dare look away. He’s at the top of his game with this one, and, excitingly, with only three directorial credits under his belt his potential may still be untapped.

This is one of those horror flicks best experienced with every light in the house off and your door creaked slightly open so that the darkness outside the room spills in. That is, if you can’t see it in a theater. Either way, it demands an environment suited to every jump and jerk. There are a few specific visuals here that are bound to burn permanently into your brain, with one involving a piano and another a staircase and a shadow; they mustn’t be spoiled, but also must be mentioned. You’ll know them when you see them.

As if the spooks weren’t enough, Antony Starr leads a star-studded ensemble of performances here. Everyone is great, and notably child-lead Woody Norman has a future in the genre, but Starr lives and breathes in this role. Funnily enough, his performance is quite similar to his infamous turn as Homelander in Amazon’s The Boys. The energy is the same, though here he’s less unhinged and more deliberate; he’s a ball of anger and mistreatment, wrecking through the halls and imposing his physical presence on everyone present. He’s just magnificent.

Mistreatment is the overarching theme here. Everyone has been mistreated and has mistreated another, and in turn, nothing is black and white. Trauma is cyclical; Cobweb doesn’t say how far it goes back, but it’s clear that it goes deeper than what we’re shown. This notion feeds into the film’s ending which, despite coming off rather rushed, ties the theme up with a big black bow. We’re left in a way that forces you to grapple with every available aspect of the story. Much like the memorable visuals, you aren’t allowed to walk away and let this film pass through you. It ropes you all the way in and cradles you there tightly, training your eyes to the tragedy. Take a peek at the poster for a visual representation of that.

Cobweb is a must-see for horror fans. It thrills and kills in abundance, presenting some of the most stirring scares of the year thus far. The filmmaking is top-notch, too, and should serve as a draw to non-horror cinephiles simply looking for a new rock-solid movie to watch. See it on the biggest screen possible, in the darkest room that you can manage.

Cobweb will be available exclusively in theaters on July 21, 2023 courtesy of Lionsgate.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGY0icwlDGY]