Good afternoon, House of Madness critters:
A while back I did a preview for "Cobweb", so if you'd like to read my initial thoughts on the film, please click here.
When it comes to parents, who needs 'em, right? They're always on and on with their rules and controlling personalities, to the point that a kid can barely breathe. "Don't push kids down the stairs!", "Don't dig up human remains in the backyard!", "Don't unleash the demon from Hell!". I mean, come on, how's a kid supposed to have any fun with dictators like these running their household? Well for Peter (Woody Norman), these are just a few of the rules he must live by, lest he wants to spend time locked away in the basement.
Peter has a hard time sleeping at night, because unknown voices and knocking on the wall constantly berate him every time he tries to sleep. It always comes to the point where his parents intervene, check his room, and blame his overactive imagination for what he's hearing. Things aren't going much better at school for Peter, as he's bullied mercilessly, and can't count the minutes fast enough until he can get back home, even if he lives in a terrifying fortress of solitude.
One day the voice behind the wall convinces Peter that he needs to stop taking his bully's bullshit and stand up for himself, which ends up earning him an expulsion from school, and a grounding to the family basement which is secretly locked away behind the refrigerator for some reason. What starts out being a punishment turns into a plotting against his captors with the help of the voice Peter hears, and now we're on a collision course with the insane as the film reaches its clever if not a little cliched climax.
"Cobweb" builds tension through mystery and does it quite well, much like director Samuel Bodin's previous effort "Marianne", yet once we get all the knowledge of what exactly is happening, we're left with plenty of questions and very few answers. With a modest runtime of 88 minutes, I personally would have liked to see an extra 10-15 minutes of backstory, and have these questions answered to satisfy my curiosity; instead, the last 5-10 minutes feel rushed and tacked on, leaving us wondering what could have been. In the end, "Cobweb" is a solid effort that relies little on jump scares, and lots on tension, but it's a shame the filmmakers didn't weave their web a little further - they would have caught a lot more praise from this reviewer.
Madness Meter: 6.2/10
NB
