Samuel Bodin: Last News

William Earl Horror Film School is a new feature in which talent in front of and behind the camera share the ins and outs of creating the biggest onscreen scares. “Cobweb” is French director Samuel Bodin’s feature debut, but he’s well-known to horror fans for directing and co-writing the scary-as-hell 2019 French series “Marianne.” Bodin expands on the shadows and secrets of the series with “Cobweb,” a twisty tale in which Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr play the creepy parents of Peter (Woody Norman), who starts hearing haunted whispers in the walls. The Hollywood project, produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey, was a departure for Bodin, but follows his tested guidelines for conjuring scares. Bodin shares his dos and don’ts of directing a scary movie.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic If “Barbarian” handily won as last year’s premier monster-in-the-basement movie, 2023’s prize might well end up going to “Cobweb” — a less inspired effort, but one decently creepy enough to get the job done. Chris Thomas Devlin’s script feels like a composite of some prior horror conceits, and there is not much depth to the narrative or characters. Still, director Samuel Bodin’s first theatrical feature is atmospheric, and departs from stock slasher conventions just enough to make for an entertaining if unexceptional scarefest. Lionsgate is releasing the U.S.-produced feature (which was apparently shot in Bulgaria in 2020) to limited theaters on July 21.  It begins with the familiar device of a child having night terrors that are probably not entirely in his or her imagination. Eight-year-old Peter (Woody Norman, from “C’mon C’mon”) is a sad loner, bullied at school, who’s woken from sleep by noises seemingly behind his bedroom wall — it sounds like something or somebody is moving around back there. When he taps on the wall, “it” taps back, which sends him screaming to his parents. But they dismiss it as an old house’s bumps in the night. 

A Netflix series with a near perfect rating by critics on Rotten Tomatoes has been leaving viewers terrified.