Cobweb: The Little Horror That Crawled Into Our Minds
Unlike the major horror films, Cobweb does not “roar” into theaters, but rather “creeps” into the audience’s mindset. It was directed by Samuel Bodin, stars Woody Norman, Lizzy Caplan, and Antony Starr, and was a peculiar blend of a childhood nightmare and a suburban tragedy. It’s the type of film that does not rely on jump scares, but instead, evokes a feeling of discomfort. This discomfort is what makes this production so interesting. It is the unpassionate, the unresolved, and the quite peculiar magic that the crew bears on the screens of this film that is most captivating.
A Story That Starts With a Whisper
A pastel-colored suburban house — a not unremarkable environment for the the eight year old Peter (Woody Norman) to live with his overprotective parents, played by Lizzy Caplan (Carol) and Antony Starr (Mark). But then the oddities begin. Peter starts hearing muffled knocking and whispering from the walls of his bedroom. His parents brush it off as “the house settling” conjured up to dismiss wild childish fantasies, but the whispers grow louder and, sinister… and the parents hide the growing truths.
Fantasy? Fear? Haunting? Or an environment soaked with repression? Cobweb’s brilliance is in not seeking to answer the questions it raises; a rare boldness in a film. Muted yet dreamlike, the colors and sound design create a child’s version of a gothic nightmare where deep human disguises hide the monsters. Bedtime stories are not given in the dark; they are reversed to warnings.
However, it’s the final act, where the final secret behind the walls breaks free, that sends Cobweb into pure, claustrophobic terror. It’s not just a twist ending; it’s an emotional gut punch in the face dealing with innocence, deception, and the fear of what we inherit from those who are, in a way, supposed to protect us.
Woody Norman, the child who carried the darkness
Woody Norman, who already emerged for his performance in C’mon C’mon with Joaquin Phoenix, carries Cobweb with an extraordinary maturity for his age. Playing the part of Peter required emotional depth far beyond his years, a mixture of curiosity, guilt, and terror.
Bodin took time to gain Norman’s trust before filming. He needed to feel that the fear was simply acting. But that was not to say that the task was easy. For several scenes Norman had to act in complete silence, responding to nonexistent sounds and voices because the whispering was added later. “It was weird,” he said in an interview. “I had to imagine a friend in the walls, and then be scared of that same friend.”
Norman’s parents on screen, however, were not comforting. Antony Starr, most known as Homelander from The Boys, performed with an unsettling restraint that made his character, Mark, even creepier. Instead of crafting an overtly villainous role, Starr mo transformed Mark into a router who contains his malice and cruelty within as a polite facade. Lizzy Caplan’s Carol, on the other hand, displayed the awful unpredictability that fuels the best horror characters. Caplan’s Carol shifts from Motherly warmth to psychological torment.
A unique dynamic exists between the three performers—both profound and stifling—and this is what resonates in their performances. Yet, off the set, both Starr and Caplan defended their colleague, Norman, staunchly. The group shared the practice of taking breaks to debrief after emotionally charged scenes, which, for Woody, constituted a grounding ritual.
When Real Life Paralleled the Script
Lizzy Caplan, famed for her roles in Mean Girls and Masters of Sex, remarkably empathized with her character. “‘Carol is not a monster in her own eyes. She’s a mother who believes she’s saving her son–even if it’s from the truth,'” described Caplan. Caplan had recently crossed the threshold into motherhood herself. She admitted this preparation involved confronting her psychologically more challenging aspects of motherhood: “You realize how thin the line is between protecting and controlling,” she admitted.
Antony Starr, on the other hand, found the role haunting for different reasons. After the global success of The Boys, he was looking for something smaller and more psychologically challenging. “After playing a god like figure, I wanted to play someone weak,” he told a magazine. “Mark is a coward pretending to be strong. That’s scarier than any superhero.”
Starr even admitted to having a hard time with some scenes, especially the ones where his character emotionally manipulates Peter. “It’s one thing to play evil,” he said, “but to do it to a child, even fictionally, it messes with your head. I had to constantly remind myself that Woody was fine, that we were creating something meaningful not cruel.”
Shadows Behind the Camera
Director Samuel Bodin, most known for his French horror series Marianne, to Cobweb. But the journey was not smooth. The film’s production had to be stopped multiple times at the crew’s discretion for COVID, forcing the crew to shoot in smaller one and a half hour bursts. “We were living inside the same house for weeks,” Bodin recalled. “That claustrophobia — it seeps into the film. We didn’t just build a set; we lived in it.”
One of the most challenging aspects was the creature design.
The unveiling of The Mysterious figure Behind The Walls is both devastating and shocking. The integration of subtle CGI alongside practical effects helped maintain realism. Bodin strongly advocated for physical models, arguing that the true horror lies within the palpable discomfort, the materials causing unease. The sharp, slow movements of the creature were the result of advanced training for weeks, mastering the true essence of body rhythm distortion, by a contortionist performer.
Composer, Drum & Lace, was of the team’s coat of many musical scales. Instruments that invoked a sense of the bizarre were incorporated into the score. For example, a score that ‘The score evoked the ambiance of a dissolving memory. ‘ Making music that Bodin described as “music from inside a wall” was the wall that dissolving memory. Or, for example, music that invoked the ambiance of a dissolving memory.
The built up audience obsession, called ‘The Quiet’
Candle Weblow was published less than a month before the highly publicized horror films ‘The Nun II’ and ‘Talk me’ providing Weblow’s marketing team little hope. It’s trailer picked up incredible attention though, particularly from fans of atmospheric horror, and for good reason. ‘Every family has secrets’ was a slogan that sparked a myriad of social media user theories about secrets hidden ‘in the walls’ of the trailer and fast ‘covert’ attention.
The curiosity the trailer sparked was quickly transformed into a remarkable public attention, waiting hand and foot for the release. Woormon’s chilling character, and ‘the’ spider’s warn sign ‘symbolism’ of one family’s secrets, sparked audience theories around ‘Family Cob Web’ boasting of a rare mental collapse atmosphere for a horror film.
As for Cobweb, modest would be an understatement considering it made just under 10 million dollars, but it was one of those movies that became available for streaming long before leaving theaters. Cobweb’s horror aficionados embraced its commitment to atmosphere and mood over frenzied carnage and slaughter. Even with little else to praise, those critics that were not applause to Cobweb, still were able to find new interpretative meanings with every rewatch.
Looking back, Cobweb was not an all-time blockbuster, but it was something more proprietary: an affirmation horror does not have to be sensational to be effective. It can be deloyed to frame and evoke feelings that resonate on a more personal level. These may be primal fears, fears evoked tormented parents and the control they impose, and the deepest fears in the survival story, all adds together.
Between all those unsettling frames, were the many actors confronting their own fears. These included the director puzzled the over listeners of his nightmares and a small boy puzzled the in the weight of silence. These all helped to spin a delicate, and sticky little web for their audience, a little web that was and is beautiful in its unsuspending nature and appears to still catch those who wander a little too close for comfort.