Movie Review: The Cellar (2022)

The Cellar is a horror film written and directed by Brendan Muldowney that is based on a short horror film called The Ten Steps from 2004. It stars Elisha Cuthbert (24, Are You Afraid of the Dark) as Keira Woods, Eoin Macken (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, The Forest) as Brian Woods, and Abby Fitz as daughter Ellie Woods.

The story is about a family who has purchased a huge creepy house at an auction and decides to move into the house without knowing anything about its history. The huge creepy house also has a creepy cellar, and within a few days of being there, their daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) goes missing after her mother forces her to go into it. After Ellie goes missing, her little brother is pretty creepy himself, so he seems to enjoy the house and doesn’t seem to be too bothered by her disappearance. The family looks for her, and then Keira starts actually looking into the dark past of the home they have moved into and finds more than she bargained for.

The creepy cellar concept has been done quite a few times, but this one had a bit of a different twist on it, and it was executed well. A lot of what made this movie good came from the atmosphere and tension building. The lighting and score were well-done and there were some scenes with great tension and atmosphere. Unfortunately, these scenes were few and far between and overshadowed by some areas in the writing that we thought could have used some help. The Cellar is a decent horror film but a lot of the movie is slowly paced with a few good scenes mixed in here and there and takes too long to deliver.

Overall, we still definitely think it’s worth a watch if you are into horror films about creepy old houses. It definitely manages to capture that well, but you can probably safely avoid it if you want something with a more consistent pace.

The Blu-Ray has some cool extras like Audio Commentary, the 2004 short film Ten Steps that this film was based on (which we thought was pretty decent), interviews with cast & crew, and some VFX before and after comparisons.

The Cellar was just released on DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday, June 21st. Check out the trailer below!