Samuel Bodin’s first feature, written by Chris Thomas Devlin, pits an eight-year-old boy against his own parents in the days before Halloween, with Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr as the mother and father who insist the noise in his bedroom wall is nothing at all.

Cobweb is a 2023 American horror film directed by Samuel Bodin from a screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin, starring Lizzy Caplan, Woody Norman, Cleopatra Coleman and Antony Starr. Lionsgate released it in a limited number of US cinemas on July 21, 2023, and its setup fits in a sentence: a small boy hears tapping from inside his bedroom wall, and the two adults who are supposed to protect him tell him he is imagining it.

That premise is old in the best sense. Horror has always been fond of the house that knows more than the child sleeping in it, and Cobweb draws on that tradition openly, from its Halloween setting to the folk-tale logic of a family with a locked secret. What gives it a slightly different shape is the question it keeps open for most of its 88 minutes: whether the danger is in the wall, or in the people who keep telling Peter there is nothing there.

The story: a tapping wall and a Halloween ban

Peter, played by Woody Norman, is eight, shy and picked on at school. At home he lives with Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr), parents who are controlling and emotionally distant in equal measure. Halloween is coming, and Peter wants what every other child in the neighbourhood wants: to go trick-or-treating. His parents forbid it, pointing to a girl who disappeared from the area years earlier.

Then the tapping starts. It comes from inside the wall of Peter’s bedroom, at night, and his parents deny that it is happening at all. Over the following days the noise becomes a voice, and the voice tells Peter things about his family that he has no way of checking. His substitute teacher, Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman), grows worried after Peter hands in a drawing of himself frightened in bed with the words «Help me» written on it, and her concern only makes things worse at home.

At school, a bully named Brian (Luke Busey) destroys the pumpkin Peter is proudest of, and Peter’s response sets off a chain of punishments that ends with him locked in the basement. From there the film tightens around the questions it has planted: who is behind the wall, what the parents are hiding, and whether the voice is on Peter’s side. We will stop the summary there, because the second half depends on what the house gives up and when.

From Marianne to a first feature

Cobweb is Samuel Bodin’s feature directing debut. Before it, the French filmmaker was best known for Marianne, the eight-episode Netflix horror series he directed and co-wrote, released in 2019, about a novelist whose fictional witch turns out to be less fictional than she thought. The series was not renewed for a second season, and Cobweb became Bodin’s first English-language project and his first film for a Hollywood studio. Lionsgate announced his attachment to the project in May 2020.

The script came first. Chris Thomas Devlin’s screenplay for Cobweb was included on the 2018 Black List, the annual industry survey of the best-liked unproduced scripts in Hollywood, years before cameras rolled. Devlin went on to write Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 2022 sequel that went straight to Netflix, so by the time Cobweb reached cinemas he had two horror features to his name.

The producing team gives a sense of the film’s ambitions. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and James Weaver produced through Point Grey Pictures, the company Rogen and Goldberg run together, alongside Roy Lee and Andrew Childs of Vertigo Entertainment, whose name is attached to American horror hits such as the Stephen King adaptation It. Media Capital Technologies co-financed. For a debut director, it is a heavyweight table to sit at.

Who plays the family

The film rests on a child. Woody Norman, the English actor who earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Jesse opposite Joaquin Phoenix in Mike Mills’s C’mon C’mon (2021), plays Peter, and the story follows his point of view. Casting a young performer with that kind of recent recognition was a clear signal that Cobweb meant to be a story about a boy, not merely a story with one in it.

Lizzy Caplan, whose career runs from Freaks and Geeks and Mean Girls to Masters of Sex and the role of Annie Wilkes in Castle Rock, plays Carol, the mother whose reassurances Peter gradually stops believing. Antony Starr, a household name since playing Homelander in The Boys, is Mark, the father. It is a piece of casting that leans on what audiences already associate with Starr. Cleopatra Coleman, known from the sitcom The Last Man on Earth and from Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, plays Miss Devine, the one adult outside the house who takes Peter seriously. Aleksandra Dragova plays the girl, with voice work by Olivia Sussman and Debra Wilson.

Craft and production

Behind the camera, Bodin brought cinematographer Philip Lozano, with editing shared between Richard Riffaud and Kevin Greutert, an editor and director with long experience in the Saw franchise. The score is by Drum & Lace, the project of composer Sofia Hultquist, and the production designer is Alan Gilmore. The visual effects company VFX Legion handled more than 225 effects shots, a considerable number for a story set largely inside one family home.

Cobweb was a pandemic shoot. The cast was announced in September 2020 with principal photography planned for Bulgaria, and filming took place at Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia in November 2020, when many productions were still finding ways to work under health restrictions. The American suburb of the story, with its pumpkins, porches and trick-or-treaters, was therefore recreated in Bulgaria, a common arrangement for mid-budget genre films that need a controlled stage for a house full of hidden spaces.

Release and where it sits in the genre

The film’s release was modest. Lionsgate opened it in a limited number of US theatres on July 21, 2023, the same weekend that Barbie and Oppenheimer arrived, and moved it to digital platforms on August 11, followed by Blu-ray and DVD on September 12, in time for the Halloween season the story takes place in. Its worldwide gross came to around 10 million dollars, the kind of result that tends to give a horror film a second life on home video rather than in theatres.

Seen in context, Cobweb belongs to a strand of horror built on a child’s perspective: the young protagonist who notices what adults refuse to see, and the dread of not being believed by the people in charge. Devlin’s script adds its own layer by making the parents, rather than an outside threat, the first source of fear, and by letting the audience doubt everyone for as long as possible. It is a genre that rewards familiarity, and the film does not hide where its ingredients come from.

Cobweb is a modest, self-aware horror film that knows the traditions it works in, made by a director stepping up from television and a writer who had carried the script for years. Its strongest calling cards on paper are its cast, led by a child actor fresh from a BAFTA nomination, and a premise anyone can grasp in a sentence. Whether the tapping in the wall pays off is the part each viewer will judge for themselves, and the less they know beforehand, the better that judgement will be.

The Cast

Woody Norman

Woody Ace Norman is a renowned English child actor recognized for his exceptional performance as Jesse in the critically acclaimed film C’mon C’mon (2021). His outstanding portrayal earned him a prestigious BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Lizzy Caplan

Elizabeth Anne Caplan, an American actress, gained prominence for her roles in various television series and films. She initially made her mark on the cult TV show Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000) and later garnered wider recognition through her performances in Mean Girls (2004) and Cloverfield (2008), the latter of which led to a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. Caplan has also appeared in television shows such as Related (2005–2006), The Class (2006–2007), and Party Down (2009–2010).

From 2013 to 2016, Caplan portrayed the character of Virginia E. Johnson in the Showtime series Masters of Sex, earning nominations for a Primetime Emmy, two Satellite Awards, and a Critics’ Choice Award. In 2019, she showcased her talent as Annie Wilkes in the Hulu anthology series Castle Rock. Additionally, Caplan has made notable appearances in films like Hot Tub Time Machine, 127 Hours (both 2010), Save the Date, Bachelorette (both 2012), The Interview (2014), Now You See Me 2, Allied (both 2016), and Extinction (2018).

Antony Starr

Antony Starr, a New Zealand actor, has gained recognition for his notable television roles. He portrayed the characters Jethro and Van West in the series Outrageous Fortune (2005–2010), Lucas Hood in Banshee (2013–2016), and Homelander in The Boys (2019–present).

Starr’s exceptional performance in the 2012 Australian film Wish You Were Here earned him the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, along with other prestigious honors. Additionally, he received a nomination for the New Zealand Film Award for Best Actor for his role in After the Waterfall (2010).

Tags: horror, Lizzy Caplan