/Film first reported on the movie back in September of 2020, at which time it was revealed that a murderer’s row of big names such as Roy Lee, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg were on board as producers. Wouldn’t a studio like Lionsgate want to boast about a movie with such heavy hitters attached to it? One might think! Especially since horror has generally been crushing at the box office in the post-pandemic landscape.
Here we are, as the movie is now available on VOD with hardly a peep about it, and no real proof that anyone actually purchased a ticket to see this thing anywhere in North America. “Cobweb” is billed as a “specialty release” on Lionsgate’s publicity website, so it was never meant to open wide in hundreds of theaters. But that certainly doesn’t mean the studio should seemingly pretend it doesn’t exist either. Especially because this feels like a very marketable movie.
Serving as the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Samuel Bodin, the film centers on an eight-year-old boy named Peter who is plagued by a mysterious, constant tapping inside his bedroom wall — a tapping that his parents insist is all in his imagination. As Peter’s fear intensifies, he believes that his parents (Caplan and Starr) could be hiding a terrible secret.
It’s not as though nobody likes the movie. It currently holds a 62% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes along with a 73% audience score. /Film’s own William Bibbiani called it one of the year’s best horror movies. Despite that, so far as I can tell, promotion for the film by Lionsgate has been minimal, with just a few posts from the Lionsgate Horror social media accounts hyping up the release.