Brian Muldowney (director)
(studio)
18 (certificate)
94 (length)
15 April 2022 (released)
10 April 2022
A huge daunting house is the new family home for Keira (Elisha Cuthbert) and Brian (Eoin Macken) daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) and son Steve (Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady).
Ellie is not to impressed at being dragged out into the country to a tired and musty, seemingly abandoned house. She is further put off when investigating the cellar when she gets locked in with the distinct feeling that something is coming at her, up the steps.
Later on while the parents are at business meeting with the children at home the lights begin to flicker and go out. Going down into the cellar to check the fuses, while talking to her mother, Ellie disappears.
Reported to the police but frustrated Keira begins her own investigation. Starting with the house which oddly has numbered steps down to the cellar, with a mathematical formula at the foot. Which are in step with the other strange symbols around the house.
Keira digs deeper calling with the auctioneers that handled the sale, eventually leading to mathematician Dr Fournet (Aaron Monaghan). Things then start to fall into place and it’s not just the cellar they need to worry about.
The Cellar is based on Brian Muldowney’s excellent and highly recommended 2004 short film The Ten Steps. That was ten minutes of tight claustrophobia. Naturally the tale is extended and here there’s much more emphasis of the house, with sweeping outside drone shots, and plenty of dark rooms, steps and, a cellar. That ropes it to the old-dark-house sub-genre though Muldowney’s introduction of cosmic dimensions and mathematics helps to put it at arm’s length from those creaky spookers.
It generally satisfies as an effective if somewhat patchy thriller. There are times when the anticipation of dread and intensity doesn’t quite hit the levels expected until the last act of the film when the earlier groundwork film starts to pay off. There are some surprises though with images that maybe wouldn’t be expected, alluding to Lucio Fulci and The Beyond.
The Cellar closed FrightFest Glasgow 2022 and will debut on Shudder from 15 April.
