Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Eight year old Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant tapping from inside his bedroom wall—one that his parents insist is all in his imagination. As Peter's fear intensifies, he believes that his parents could be hiding a terrible, dangerous secret and questions their trustworthiness.
Cobweb delivers a reasonably effective slow-burn haunted-house setup with a creepy child-in-peril premise and some genuinely unsettling atmosphere in its first two acts. The mysterious tapping and dysfunctional family dynamic create solid dread, but the film leans heavily on familiar horror tropes — the unreliable parents, the isolated child, the thing-behind-the-wall — without meaningfully subverting or elevating them. Acting is serviceable across the board, with Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr leaning into their menacing parental roles capably, though nothing transcends the material. The cinematography uses shadow and claustrophobic framing effectively enough to maintain mood but isn't particularly distinctive. The third act reveals and climax squander much of the tension built earlier, veering into creature-feature territory that feels rushed and tonally mismatched with the psychological dread that preceded it, weakening the overall impact significantly.