‘Cellar’ Review: Elisha Cuthbert Mostly Survives The Basic Rules Of Horror [SXSW]

The rules of surviving a horror movie are relatively simple. Don’t buy an impossibly cheap house where the previous owner died under unusual circumstances. Oh, and don’t go into the basement. Even if there’s a power outage. Even if your mom tells you to. If it’s spooky, and you just moved into an impossibly cheap house where the previous owner died under unusual circumstances, and even if your mom tells you to, don’t go in the basement. 

READ MORE: 2022 SXSW Film Festival: 15 Must-See Film & TV Projects

So, when new homeowners Keira (Elisha Cuthbert) and Brian Woods (Eoin Macken) – the ones who just bought an impossibly cheap house because the previous owners died of unusual circumstances – decide to leave their two kids at home to attend a business meeting on the first day of owning their new home, the power goes out. And when Keira orders her daughter to go into the basement to check the fuse box, what predictably ensues is precisely what should happen in a typical horror movie when you send your unwilling child into the basement or titular “cellar” of this movie.

Keira’s phone call with her terrified daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) is easily the most terrifying scene in the movie, and Fitz sells her character’s terror as she walks down the stairs, ordered by her mother, who asks her to count down from ten as she goes down these steps. Newcomer Fitz is particularly good here – seamlessly and deftly shifting from self-absorbed, put-upon, and bratty teen to scared shitless child within seconds. Cross-cutting between the annoyed mother and the barely-holding-it-together daughter adds another layer to the ensuing terror of the scene. 

Writer/director Brendan Muldowney’s “The Cellar” builds upon the corpses of other memorable basement films like “The Amityville Horror,” The “Silence of the Lambs,” and “The Evil Dead” but adds elements of a new mythology that combines mystical numeracy with your average “Devil in the basement” arcana. Muldowney lets us know that he’s a master of mood from the very beginning of the film, but “The Cellar” never quite lives up to the initial scariness of the early staircase sequence. The darkness of the uncanny basement has infinite potential, but the longer the movie goes, and the more the mystery is revealed, the less scary it gets. The same can be said for the revelation of the monstrous entity that lives in the house. As long as the mystery is sustained, this creature is infinitely terrifying, but once we see it, it just seems silly. 

“The Cellar” is much the same. Even the title evokes the terror of the unknown, but as soon as Muldowney explains it, the movie moves from terrifying to mundane. Having said that, Fitz’s performance on the stairs warrants recommendation in itself. Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady plays Ellie’s younger brother Steven, and he admirably embodies his role as the precocious, yet creepy child in a haunted house movie. Elisha Cuthbert, previously known for playing the plucky, bare midriffed horror heroine of 2000s mainstays like “House of Wax,” has matured here. Her signature blonde locks dyed black, Cuthbert convincingly plays a concerned young mother investigating the mystery of the cellar, even though she is arguably still too young to play the mother of a 16-year-old teenager. Her experience in this genre shows, and she plays her transformation from unwitting victim of the nefarious forces in her house to active investigator, well. It’s nice to see Cuthbert’s familiar face after her recent screen hiatus. 

“The Cellar” is a lot like that too. Familiar tropes and genre movies are comforting for precisely their familiarity. Not all horror movies need to be perfect. Not all horror movies need to be great in order to be good. Instead, many are there to pass the time and make us feel less terrible about the world. Clearing this low bar means that “The Cellar” makes the grade. It’s good without being elevated or necessarily great. But it has enough scares to qualify as a decent “dark place” movie without breaking the mold. It is both comfort food and an important reminder not to buy a cheap house from people who died under mysterious circumstances and not to go down into the cellar during a blackout. [B]

Follow along for our complete coverage from the 2022 SXSW Film Festival.