Antony Starr and Lizzy Caplan star in this spooky new chiller from debut director Samuel Bodin. Get ready to get creeped out as Cobweb is now playing in UK cinemas.
Starr and Caplan are Mark and Carol, respectively, a married couple struggling to raise their bullied eight-year-old son, Peter (Woody Norman, last seen opposite Joaquin Phoenix in C’mon C’mon). But are they part of the problem? They’ve definitely got a Stepford/suburban gothic vibe going on, plus there’s the creepy voice Peter hears whispering from within the walls of their house, and the skull he finds buried in the garden.
Kindly teacher Miss Devine (Australian actor Cleopatra Coleman) knows something is wrong, but her options are limited. Perhaps it’s all in Peter’s head? That would explain why the voice, seemingly a ghost named Sarah, starts encouraging him to torment his tormentors…
This one has a decent pedigree. The script by Chris Thomas Devlin featured prominently on the 2018 Black List, the closely watched compendium of the best unproduced original screenplays doing the rounds. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are producing through their Point Grey shingle, which explains the presence of The Boys’ breakout star, Starr.
To be fair, we’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing before. The trailer definitely has notes of The Exorcist and The Ring, plus the Halloween setting certainly reminds of another landmark horror franchise. But hey: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
We’ll always turn up for a creepy kid flick, and for the rarer creepy parents movie. But Cobweb is a two-fer, guaranteeing more unsettling bang for your buck. As far as weird-happenings-in-suburbia goes, it’s safe to say that David Lynch’s reigning championship remains unchallenged. But if you’re in the mood for a slice of queasy, creeping terror on a Friday evening, Cobweb has you covered.
