The horror movie Cobweb is worth it for Homelander fans and no one else

polygon.com:

Is one actor a good enough reason to watch a horror movie? That decision is between you and the Elder Gods, but Cobweb, the new horror film out this weekend hoping to nab anyone not caught up in Barbenheimer mania, makes a pretty strong case for The Boys’ Antony Starr as a horror movie icon — until it abandons him for something less scary.

Cobweb follows Peter (Woody Norman), a troubled young boy whose life reads a lot like the start of a sad fairy tale. He lives with his parents, Mark (Starr, The Boys’ Homelander) and Carol (Lizzy Caplan), in a big old house that seems devoid of a lot of the modern pleasures his friends probably enjoy. He doesn’t really go out, watch TV, or play video games. His parents keep a pumpkin patch, which seems to be the only thing they do together. And when Peter is in trouble, they lock him in the basement.

The family at the center of Cobweb initially seems like the mystery the film is built around, especially when Peter starts hearing a voice speaking to him from his bedroom walls. Peter befriends the voice, and learns that there may be things about his parents he doesn’t know. For a good chunk of Cobweb’s 90-minute run time, it seems like it’s building to a revelation about them. Unfortunately, the film’s most compelling questions don’t ever get answered.

In its third act, Cobweb pivots to another kind of horror entirely, abruptly trading the palpable fear of a child whose parents may be secretly sinister for a goofier monster movie. As inelegant as that transition is, it isn’t unwelcome. The film’s script, full of obvious cues and terrible grade-schooler dialogue where schoolyard bullies threaten Peter like they’re fellow inmates in gen pop, simply can’t support the domestic dread in the