Cobweb is the kind of movie that gently asks, “What if your parents were lying, your walls were full of secrets, and the voice in your bedroom wasn’t your imagination but a resentful spider-goblin sister with abandonment issues?”
Then it answers: “Well, therapy is no longer going to cut it.”
Samuel Bodin’s directorial debut is a strange, stylish little nightmare—part fairy tale, part haunted-house story, part “do not have children if you are this unhinged” cautionary tale. It’s not perfect, but it’s memorable, and in a horror landscape full of generic demons and haunted Airbnbs, Cobweb feels like an actual storybook from hell.
Once Upon a Time, in a House That Should’ve Been Condemned…
Our hero is Peter (Woody Norman), a shy, bullied eight-year-old whose life is a cocktail of:
-
emotionally distant parents,
-
zero friends,
-
and a bedroom wall that starts tapping back at him.
His parents, Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr), are that special horror-movie breed of mother and father who radiate “something is very wrong here” energy even when they’re just pouring cereal. They insist everything is fine. There’s nothing in the walls. Peter is just “imaginative.”
Which, to be fair, is exactly what you say when you’ve literally imprisoned your deformed firstborn daughter behind a wall and don’t want to discuss it.
Peter’s only real ally is his substitute teacher, Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman), who sees a drawing he makes—a picture of himself in bed with the words “Help me”—and reasonably concludes, “Okay, this is not just normal kid angst.” She starts checking on him. Carol reacts to that like any normal mother would if something innocent were happening: by getting intensely hostile and weird.
Meanwhile, the voice in the wall starts talking to Peter. She says her name is Sarah, claims she’s his sister, and tells him their parents are “evil.” To be fair, this is not exactly an insane theory.
From there, Cobweb becomes a fun little descent into domestic madness: missing trick-or-treaters, buried skulls in the garden, locked basements, a pit covered by a grate, and the looming question:
Is Sarah a victim? A monster? Both? Neither?
Spoiler: it’s “both,” with a side of “run.”
Little Boy, Big Trauma
Woody Norman is fantastic as Peter. Child protagonists in horror can be hit-or-miss—either too precocious or too blank—but Norman lands exactly in that unsettling middle: sensitive, withdrawn, and just frightened enough that every bad decision he makes feels tragically understandable.
You want to grab him and say, “Buddy, don’t listen to the voice in the wall,” but also… the adults in his life are absolutely useless. Miss Devine tries, bless her, but she’s up against two unhinged parents and one extremely persuasive wall-sister. Peter’s choices end up being:
-
Trust the people who lie to you and lock you in basements
or -
Trust the disembodied voice that sounds kind and trapped and keeps giving you useful information
In other words: he is doomed.
Parents of the Year (of the Apocalypse)
Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr are perfectly cast as Carol and Mark, Peter’s parents and full-time red flags in human form.
Caplan’s Carol is brittle and manic, with this strained, too-bright smile that says, “Everything is fine, and if you suggest otherwise I will absolutely stab something.” She oscillates between smothering and cruel, and you can see the terror underneath—she’s a woman clinging desperately to a version of reality that doesn’t involve “we raised a monster child in the walls.”
Antony Starr’s Mark is quieter but no less unsettling. He’s emotionally vacant in that specific way where you feel like he’s put his entire soul in a locked cabinet and lost the key on purpose. Starr has perfected “suburban horror dad” after The Boys’ homicidal superhero gig; here he’s more muted, but the sense of menace is still there.
The film smartly doesn’t make them cartoon villains. They did something monstrous, yes. But it came from fear and revulsion at their daughter’s appearance—horrible, but human. They are both perpetrators and, in a very twisted way, victims of their own cowardice. Which doesn’t stop them from being poisoned, stabbed, and dead on the floor, but hey. Actions, consequences.
Sarah: The Girl in the Walls and in Your Nightmares
The voice Peter hears is disarmingly kind—soft, patient, encouraging. Young Sarah sounds like the imaginary friend every lonely child wishes they had. When she claims their parents locked her away for no good reason, you believe her.
And then she comes out.
The reveal of Sarah as a grotesque, spider-like, contorted creature is one of the film’s best moments. She’s not a demon or a ghost. She’s still human—technically—but twisted, disfigured, and furious. A mix of practical effects and performance turns her into something that feels like a living urban legend.
Her backstory is simple and cruel: born severely deformed, she terrified her parents, who locked her away instead of facing what she was. Left alone, she became feral. When Peter was born—normal, loved, given the life she never had—her resentment calcified into something razor-sharp.
She didn’t just want freedom. She wanted revenge. Not just on her parents, but on the brother who accidentally replaced her.
It’s a neat twist on the “monster in the house” trope: Sarah is genuinely wronged, but that doesn’t make her safe. You feel for her… right up until she weaponizes Peter’s love and loneliness and happily watches him kill his own parents.
Fairy Tale from Hell
Creepy house, secret sibling, murdered trick-or-treater buried in the yard, Halloween as a cursed date—this movie feels like a grim little fairy tale for kids who grew up on Coraline and thought, “Okay, but what if we go way darker?”
You’ve got:
-
The forbidden door (behind the grandfather clock).
-
The parents who say “don’t go there.”
-
The mysterious helper (Miss Devine).
-
The sibling who turns out to be the real villain.
It’s Red Riding Hood if Grandma was in the walls and the wolf was everyone’s bad choices.
The movie leans into this tone with its production design—narrow hallways, dim lighting, claustrophobic framing. The house always feels just a little too big and too quiet, like the entire place is holding its breath.
Violence, but Make It Cathartic
Once the third act kicks in, Cobweb stops whispering and starts stabbing.
The bullies come back to get revenge on Peter and instead get turned into Sarah’s interactive stress toys. Limbs go missing. People are dragged into darkness. The house becomes a playground of death traps and shadows, and honestly? They all kind of had it coming.
Miss Devine’s return raises the stakes, because she’s the only adult you don’t actively want to see killed, which naturally means she’s immediately in danger. The sequence of Peter and Miss Devine trying (and failing, and trying again) to survive Sarah is tense and satisfying.
And the solution? Not killing Sarah. Just putting her back. Hair yanked, monster dropped, pit closed. It’s not justice. It’s containment. Which is actually more unsettling: Sarah is still down there, pissed, promising revenge, and you know that someday, someone will move into that house, hear tapping, and repeat the whole cycle again.
Not Perfect, But Definitely Sticky
Is Cobweb flawless? No.
-
The pacing can be uneven—slow build, then all hell at once.
-
Some subplots, like the bully stuff, feel more like setup for later carnage than fully fleshed-out narrative threads.
-
The world outside the house (school, town, etc.) is a bit thinly sketched.
But honestly, those are forgivable sins in a horror movie that actually commits to a weird idea and sees it through. This isn’t a generic “demon wants your soul” script. It’s a small, nasty morality play about neglect, resentment, and what happens when secrets grow teeth.
Final Verdict: Don’t Trust the Walls
Cobweb is a compact, 88-minute dose of domestic dread and creature-feature fun, held together by strong performances, an unnerving central monster, and the persistent fear that your family is hiding something much worse than emotional dysfunction.
If you like:
-
Kids in creepy houses,
-
Monsters with tragic backstories and terrible coping skills,
-
And fairy-tale logic filtered through Halloween and rot…
…this is absolutely worth your time.
Just don’t hang a grandfather clock in your hallway after watching it. Or if you do, maybe don’t check behind it next time you hear a tap on the wall. That’s not loneliness. That’s a sibling with a grudge.
