Cobweb

Not a huge fan of this movie because of the massive pivot half way thru.

I won't spoil it but there's a point where they build up to something which I was looking forward to, and then the movie just devolves down the proverbial toilet bowl.

Some of the audience will enjoy the devolution after build up and then full toilet bowl down to bad writing/cgi and utter nonsense, but I personally wasn't a fan.

This is becoming a bit of a trend, where movies will drive you somewhere, but then make a hard turn into chaos, where the writing style and the entire build up was something of a ruse. This movie for me it didn't work, the first half was well acted and very creepy however. 5.5/10.

If there's something Samuel Bodin knows how to do, it's create tension and suspense, waiting for the right moment to terrify us. After "Marianne," he does it again in "Cobweb," which uses a very well-crafted script throughout two acts to build-up a story that may seem similar to many others but has its originality later revealed. There are chilling moments, and it takes unexpected paths, always supported by excellent performances and a highly imaginative camera work.

It's a shame that some small details don't live up to the rest of the work - yes, the typical "why did you go there and didn't call the police" kind of thing - including a hurried conclusion that should have provided more answers and a more convincing resolution.

The first hour of Cobweb was properly scary in places, built some great tension and benefited from great acting from Caplan especially. The direction was very effective even though it did rely on jump scares a little to much.

So far so good. However, the last twenty minutes or so really stretch the levels of believability to breaking point. The strength of Cobweb is its ambiguous nature at the start. What happened to the girl? Who really are the mum and dad? And who is the voice behind the wall? Are all questions that we really shouldn't have had answers to.

Unfortunately it seems that the director to the excellent French spook series on Netflix Mariane has caved to the less esoteric American style of of happy endings with everything and cover it with layers of cheese.

Still very watchable though.

I'm a huge horror fanatic especially these under the radar films. I went into this really not knowing much just the cool looking posters. The movie starts of amazing with great camera work and the main cast was really good (creepy) the star was the child actor and he was the star. I enjoyed what he brought to the film and was very believable. The movie didn't have any straight forward runs, every time you think you have it figured out it gave you a hard left (Barbarian) type style hard turns of the plot. It had me fully intrigued and committed as a horror fan. First half of the movie I couldn't figure it out but yet I thought I had it figured out. Now that last act was the let down. It could of been delivered so much better but it felt rushed and without a set conclusion, no actual closure. It was a tale of 2 half's and the first half was an amazingly done film the last half I don't know what happen, so disappointed but I'll say it's worth a viewing.

Cobweb is certainly a flawed film, but has enough going for it to keep me heavily invested and having a good time watching.

The camera work is sleek, the house is horrifying, the performances are good enough, and being honest: in a theater this was actually quite spooky with some well crafted scares. The third act is very odd, structurally. It even turns into a slasher movie for a minute there. But I actually enjoyed the bonkers nature of it, though I understand it won't work for everyone.

As I mentioned, there are flaws. The relationship between Peter and his parents could have used some setup (has their relationship always been this weird?), and a few aspects of the ending had me very perplexed and don't seem to hold up if you think deeply about them. The last 60 seconds felt like it could have been stretched a little more for better closure, but I guess they wanted to keep it more open-ended?

I highly recommend Cobweb for more forgiving horror fans- which sounds like a knock on it, but it's really not. Certainly prefer this flawed but imaginative work compared to studio involved schlock.