Film Review: THE CELLAR: Elisha Cuthbert Stars in an Oddly Unusual Haunted House Movie [SXSW 2022]

The Cellar Review

The Cellar (2022) Film Review from the 29th Annual South by Southwest Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Brendan Muldowney and starring Elisha Cuthbert, Eoin Macken, Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady, Abby Fitz, Aaron Monaghan, Tara Lee, Sean Doyle and Steve Gunn.

The Cellar is a surprising new film about the horrifying realities of how mathematics interacts with the concept of haunted houses. When it comes to dimensions and what happens when a young girl vanishes in her family home’s cellar, the convoluted plot of the new picture is actually pretty interesting although the amateurish production value of the film sometimes undermines the film’s artistic integrity. Nevertheless, Elisha Cuthbert adds another intriguing character to her resume and the movie holds a few tricks up its sleeve. It won’t please hardcore horror fans but more lenient viewers may find some things to admire here.

Cuthbert and Eoin Macken portray Keira and Brian Woods who move their kids into a nice size home although the Woods couple’s daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) isn’t too thrilled to be moving in. Ancient evil lies beneath the house or in the house or wherever. It’s in there and this family will never be the same again. Keira and Brian are marketing people by trade and the movie spends a bit of a time showing how the mother Keira has become a bit immersed in her career. When Keira and Brian are out on business, there’s a power outage and Keira tells Ellie she has to just go down 10 steps to get down the cellar to fix the issue. Ellie disappears and the movie centers on the attempt to discover what happened to the rebellious young Ellie.

When people go searching for Ellie, there is little evidence to suggest she has run away but people try to believe that notion in order to negate the idea that the house is, indeed, haunted. Keira is suggested to be irrational when she starts to seek answers that nobody else wants to believe exist.

This film is the type of movie where number patterns are supposed to be scary and there are ghostly images revealed on the walls when light is shone upon them. As for the mathematical equations, one may wish Good Will Hunting was around to help Keira figure out what, exactly, happened to her daughter. There is also the character of Dr. Fournet (Aaron Monaghan) who is the resident professional on board who may or may not have all the answers.

There are a number of problems with The Cellar that manifest themselves throughout the dimly lit movie. Some things happen too quickly and the characters’ reactions to the events that occur seem to be too dependent on the needs of the picture’s plot. A movie about a haunted house always requires investigation into the background of the home and the previous owner and there are subplots here that involve just that type of cliched research that has always felt like time filler to me. Hereditary was over two hours long and had a lot of investigative scenes but as disappointed as I was with aspects of that film, it had more on its thematic bones than The Cellar has.

There’s no reason to suggest horror audiences will hate The Cellar. On the contrary, there are a number of assets here, namely Cuthbert’s performance. Not many actresses can do inquisitive character work like Cuthbert can and the performer is always intriguing to watch even when the plot steers her in odd directions. As her son Steven, Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady is surprisingly effective. Macken and Fitz occasionally try to hold their own, but their characters are too one-note for their own good. Ellie, in particular, is a cliched teenager.

With those criticisms at my disposal, I must say that The Cellar has some interesting revelations that make the movie more palatable than it could have been. There are some frightening images but not enough to truly make this film stand out as a must-see for horror fans. But, if you don’t have anything to do and you’re a Cuthbert fan, you may just enjoy this gimmicky haunted house picture.

Rating: 5.5/10

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