Cobweb

 Peter's life sucks. Eight-year-olds don't have it easy in horror movies, but Peter (Woody Norman) already starts Cobweb going through hell at school and at home; I mean, this is a kid who, when asked to draw something for Halloween in class, draws himself in the dark, screaming for help. It's kind of a horror movie trope, sure, but here it's grimly funny in an Edward Gorey sort of way.

 Things... will not improve.

 His parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) act like a normal mom & dad, at least some of the time, but it's immediately obvious something's wrong with them; both are inhabitants of a sort of behavioral uncanny valley, like aliens who've studied but don't quite get how to impersonate human beings. Passive aggressive, with an undercurrent of menace or madness running beneath their every single appearance. To add to Peter's troubles, he begins hearing a knocking on his bedroom walls at night.

 The kid is naturally horrified by the nocturnal noises, but his parents' reactions to his cries - beleaguered, almost as if they couldn't believe the shit their son puts them through - might be worse. So when the knocks are followed by a voice asking to be Peter's friend, he's alienated enough to accept.

 Peter starts digging into the voice's claims that his parents are not to be trusted, a message he's only too ready to believe. Meanwhile, a friendly substitute teacher (Cleopatra Coleman) gets concerned about Peter's welfare (mainly after seeing his very literal cry for help drawing), and does a little digging of her own.

 It all can only end in tears. And blood. Mostly blood.

 Cobweb is a deeply, knowingly ridiculous movie. The script by Chris Thomas Devlin never edges into comedy, but makes it so that everything is heightened and off-kilter; a tone that's perfectly calibrated to fit the increasingly over-the top nastiness Peter is forced to endure. It walks the macabre line well, at least until it pulls out the stops in the third act.

 Director Samuel Bodin does well by his first feature, with quietly strong, tightly controlled visuals that still manage to fit in some neat ideas of how to transition from scene to scene and a focus on looming shadows. Cinematographer Philip Lozano has the thankless task of working with a desaturated palette and scenes that are almost always extremely dark, but he does a good job; it's a good-looking film.
 And when the gore arrives, it's pretty decent. Nothing too gnarly, but it's nice and exaggerated and surprisingly Raimi-esque. There is a monster, and while kind of derivative it's still a cool creation with some neat details. Shame about the CGI face.

 The film's greatest coup is its casting. Norman and Coleman do a great job as Peter and Miss Devine, but the parents are especially well chosen: Kaplan is a bundle of frayed nerves and anxieties, and Starr's familiar borderline sociopath performance gets a lot of uncomfortable laughs simply by, say, the way he casually brings a hammer to a friendly conversation.

 So yeah, this is another good one. Happy Halloween folks!