There’s a touch of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond in writer/director Brendan Muldowney’s film. There are no zombies or pipe-cleaner spiders, but what lurks in The Cellar may be familiar…
The Woods family have moved into a new house in a new town. Teenager Ellie (Abby Fitz) isn’t too impressed, however. Uprooted away from her friends, she hates the house without even looking around. When she and her brother, Steven (Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady), discover an old gramophone with a record containing a stern-sounding man reciting something that ends with them counting upwards. As it’s not Billy Eilish, they’re not really interested. Ellie is particularly afraid of the cellar in the house, so when the power trips, her mother talks her down to the basement on the phone. We are hearing what the mother, Keira (Elisha Cuthbert), hears through the call as Ellie counts the ten steps down. When Ellie gets beyond the twenties, she figures that something is up. Keira begins to attempt to unravel the mystery of Ellie’s disappearance and what the strange runic symbols above each of her doors might mean and if they are connected to the mathematical equation engraved in concrete at the bottom of the cellar’s steps.
The Cellar mixes an emotional family drama with hockey supernatural horror well, but it brings nothing new to the table. There are the standard shocks and predictable scares, but we don’t really gel with the characters. It doesn’t give us a chance to form an emotional bond with Ellie other than to work out that she’s a moody teen, so her disappearance doesn’t kick as hard as say the loss of Charlie in Hereditary. The plot tries to be a bit loftier than it needs to be, but it’s essentially a gateway to Hell scenario.
Cuthbert is impressive as the distraught mother, while father Eoin Macken isn’t really given much to do. Muldowney’s direction is stronger than the story, but it still manages to provide a few chills and obligatory jumps.
