Tag: cobweb

Cobweb (2024) Film Review

Obsessed with reshooting the ending of his film, director Kim must deal with the censorship authorities, actor complaints and producers who can’t understand the new ending.

Cobweb is directed by Kim Jee-woon director of The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008), I Saw The Devil (2010), A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003) and several others. 

I’m a huge fan of Kim Jee-Woon’s work, with  I Saw The Devil (2010) being one of my favorite films of all time I was very excited to finally sit down and watch Cobweb. While the film is not going to completely work for everyone, it absolutely worked for me and what mainly makes the film work is the amount of passion of it all. Both in Jee-Woon’s direction and the main character Kim Ki-yeol’s passion to finish his film Cobweb the way he wants and make it a masterpiece.

The performances are all fantastic In Cobweb especially Song Kang-ho’s performance as the earlier mentioned Kim Ki-yeol a director who wishes to complete his film the way he wants. What we have here is a very skillfully crafted and quite comedic meta commentary on film and directors wanting to create their vision. The film absolutely nails this down quite well and really delivers some quite memorable moments throughout, the film goes off the rails with its comedy quite often which only compliments the film’s themes quite well. 

The clever use of sequences alternating is impressive and masterful work from Kee Jee-woon. The scenes in color depict events that happen while the crew is filming under time constraints as well as censorship, the actors are visibly reluctant and at times are even called in at the last minute. The sequences in black and white are of the studio shooting scenes, it’s a spectacular balance between the two that really paint a powerful picture. Kim Ki-yeol goes so mad he starts boarding up the doors so his actors can’t leave or not have any distractions that get in the way of him making his masterpiece. It’s played in this soap opera and comedic way that makes the film work due to the writing and the performances. 

Overall Cobweb is an incredibly fun ride from beginning to end, as I said it may not work for everyone but if it sounds like your thing i recommend giving it a go.

Cobweb is available on all VOD platforms.

8/10 B+

Cobweb is mostly a decent thrilling ride.

Young Peter is plagued by a mysterious, constant noise from inside his bedroom wall — a tapping that his parents insist is in his imagination. As his fear intensifies, he starts to believe that his parents are hiding a terrible and dangerous secret.

Cobweb is one of those movies that really never had a chance to find it’s audience when it was in theaters. On top of being very poorly advertised it was released the same day as Barbie and Oppenheimer plus was placed a week before Talk To Me came out, Talk To Me had a lot of Sundance buzz and actual marketing so there’s that. It’s a shame to because while Cobweb is very flawed and not something I think I would ever revisit there is a lot to like here. 

Lizzy Caplan and Woody Norman are both quite great here the latter of which continues to impress since his performance in C’mon C’mon (2021). The first two acts are decently thrilling and director Samuel Bodlin quickly establishes the movie’s atmosphere pretty well, the first two acts might not be anything new to the genre but they are very serviceable and for any person who’s just looking for a short watch that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

The third act however is an entirely different story, it was trying way too hard to be something out of a Sam Rami film, which might sound really neat at first but in execution it’s almost the same thing Rami has done but just nowhere near as effective. It comes off much more ridiculous and nonsensical than it does scary or thrilling, I like the idea of what Bodlin was trying to go for with the final act it’s just not done very well between the editing and CGI. 

Having that said Cobweb definitely isn’t a bad movie, it’s one that I can easily see becoming somewhat of a “Must watch during October” movie (I almost forgot to mention that the movie takes place during Halloween.) I definitely think Samuel Bodlin will create something truly special in the future as it does seem like he clearly does have love for the genre. The ideas in Cobweb just didn’t fully come together. 

Cobweb is available on all VOD platforms. 

6/10 C+