Kiera and Brian Woods move into an old house with their two children, the teenage girl Ellie and the elementary boy Steven. Ellie, being a typical teenage girl is opposed to the move and is already missing her old place and her friends. However, Kiera and Brian moved to this place because of job opportunities, so that’s that. On their very first night in the old house, the couple must leave for work and leave their two children all alone, in a completely unfamiliar place. Yeah, great parenting right there. Ellie is of course dismayed that she is tasked with watching her younger brother on the very first night in the new house, and while Steven is up to his shenanigans he finds a secret room which includes an old Sonographe. Ellie starts playing it, only to hear a man reciting some formulas, and counting up slowly. She shuts it off before the counting reaches seven, and says to Steven that it’s time to go to bed. Soon after, there’s a power outage and Ellie panics and calls her mother. The breaker is located in the cellar (of course), but Ellie is terrified to go down there. While on the phone with her daughter, Kiera tells Ellie to count to 10, which is the number of steps down to the floor of the basement. Ellie keeps counting, but after reaching the number 10, she keeps counting and sounds like she have come into a trance-like manner. Kiera and Brian hurries home, only to find Ellie missing.
The Cellar is a 2022 Irish supernatural horror film, based on the horror short from 2004 called The Ten Steps. Both are written and directed by Brendan Muldowney. The story is following the well-known formula of how you should never buy an old, creepy house without knowing about its past. And of course, the wife is the one who understands that something spooky is going on, while the husband is pretty much “meh” about everything and believes their teenage daughter just decided to run off (which she had done before). So yeah, there are some of the familiar horror tropes here. But instead of the old over-sized house being infested with ghosts and ghoulies, however, the movie goes into sci-fi territory, with a little bit of Lovecraftian themes of cosmic horror, symbolism and occult numerology.
While the actual horror elements are a bit lacking, there’s a satisfactory amount of creepy atmosphere. The old big house with its creaky floors and gothic interior keeps the eerieness in place. It’s solid despite being rather formulaic, and the scene with Ellie going down the stairs and keeps counting is quite chilling. Of course, it’s not having the same effect as in the original horror short which leaves everything so much more mysterious. I guess that’s often an issue with horror shorts becoming full feature films: a short may only give you a small idea and leaves a lot to the imagination, while a feature film will need to explain things. Overall, however, The Cellar is a nice watch held up due to its solid atmosphere, and an interesting idea which is different from your typical spooky house flick.
Writer and director: Brendan Muldowney
Country & year: Ireland, Belgium, USA, 2022
Actors: Elisha Cuthbert, Eoin Macken, Abby Fitz, Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady, Tara Lee, Michael-David McKernan, Andrew Bennett, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14550642/
