La Maison du mal

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.

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.

This movie actually delivered as a horror movie by actually starting off with a creepiness to it and kept that feeling through most of the movie. As with most horror movies, there are moments of "that was kind of lame" but it held my attention and I did enjoy the story line and the characters.

I was originally going to rate this movie an 8 but the ending left me staring at the screen thinking " was that really the end." You know how you feel the movie getting close to the end and are anticipating what will happen? This movie had me right there the whole time but the ending was bad. So bad where I sat there kind of annoyed haha. So I dropped my rating to a 6.

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.

Director Samuel Bodin's first theatrical feature is atmospheric, and departs from stock slasher conventions just enough to make for an entertaining if unexceptional scarefest. Cobweb feels like an incomplete collection of horror ideas that aren't explored to their full potential, but it fairly succeeds thanks to the second act where the real terror awakens.

There's no sugarcoating Cobweb's flaws, from pacing to convoluted editing, and at times with crappy CGI that actually scares more than the movie. It might not be a particularly memorable horror film, but it's still decent enough with it's jump scares that engages us. The climax/conclusion was lousy though, which somehow ended in a jiffy rather than taking it slow.

My Rating:6/10.