For the French Director of Horror Film ‘Cobweb,’ the Movie’s Scariest Thing Might Be American Halloween

Lionsgate’s new thriller “Cobweb” is the kind of film horror fans live for: A tight, terrifying ride that’s filled with surprises but plays fair with the audience — there are a lot of twists and shocks, but no gimmicks in Chris Thomas Devlin’s screenplay. That script, which placed on the Black List in 2018, follows 8-year-old Peter (Woody Norman) as he becomes convinced that his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) are keeping a horrible secret — a secret connected to the tapping he hears from inside his wall. The premise is simple, but Devlin takes it in one unpredictable direction after another, keeping the characterizations and situations just realistic enough for us to stay emotionally invested while letting the story spin off into surreal and horrifying worlds.

That’s a challenging tone to sustain, but the ingenuity of Devlin’s script finds its visual corollary in Samuel Bodin’s direction. Bodin, best known for his Netflix series “Marianne,” makes his feature directing debut on “Cobweb,” but his control over the audience is so total that he feels like a horror veteran. This is the kind of movie that takes the audience in the palm of its hand and squeezes for 88 minutes, and that’s largely due to the precision of Bodin’s visual design, in which every piece of architecture and decor is just a little off. “To create fear, it’s always a question of preparation and intention,” Bodin told IndieWire, adding that he wanted the world of the movie to be as artificial as if it existed in a snow globe. “It’s not grounded, it’s a weird little world.”

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That meant an accumulation of both visual and aural exaggerations intended to keep the audience on edge, from slightly oversized sets and unnaturally orange pumpkins to doors with excessive squeaking and aggressively busy wallpaper. Bodin also let his young protagonist dictate the camera placement, with low angles and compositions that obscured what the adults were doing. “I wanted to play with the shadows to create that feeling you have when you’re a kid where you can hear your parents but not always see them or understand what they’re doing,” Bodin said. “I thought a lot about Danny in ‘The Shining’ and what [Jennifer Kent] captured in ‘The Babadook’ about childhood.”

Bodin, who is French, also embraced the strangeness of American culture as seen through his eyes. “It’s a Halloween movie, but Halloween does not have the same place in my head and heart that it does for you,” Bodin said. “I watch it through films, through stories, but I don’t have personal experience with it. So if I’m honest with myself, I know this is not going to be close to the reality of Halloween in the U.S. because I don’t know that reality. So let’s build something — and if we’re going to build a pumpkin patch, let’s make it an ocean of pumpkins with little kids in blue against the bright orange. Let’s have a lot of color everywhere and not make it a dark movie.”

Bodin found that editing the movie was where he was really able to create tension — and where he ran into his greatest challenges. Without giving too much away, large portions of “Cobweb” involve interactions between two characters, one of whom is unseen, though that often gave Bodin more options than were helpful. “You can make that character behind the wall say whatever you want, and that can be a trap,” he said. “You tell yourself that you can always find another way to do something in post-production.” Bodin tried to avoid relying too much on “fixing it in post,” instead finding discipline in deciding on set when and how to reveal information to the audience. “For me, it’s like telling a story around the campfire. With every shot, I’m trying to convince everyone to have the same nightmare in the same way.”

Lionsgate Films will release “Cobweb” in theaters beginning Friday, July 21.

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