The Cellar

Kids are smarter than adults think they are.

One would think the creatives behind The Cellar realized this, as the film features a precocious pre-teen capable of soldering servo motors, working a flamethrower, and rigging industrial explosives.

And yet, the film treats its target audience—pre-teen kids—as simpletons.

Consider the opening. It’s 1932. Another pre-teen boy stands with his dad in the Texas desert. The dad is drilling for oil, but we learn through some clunky exposition that he’s drilled deep but has yet to strike oil. His financer orders the rig shut down. The dad pleads for more time. Meanwhile, the boy’s dog runs off, leading the boy to strike out after him.

In what will become a grating pattern, the boy wanders, screaming the dog’s name. After what seems like a hundred feet, he finds a Native American spear stuck in the ground. “Whoa, rabbit’s paws,” he says to no one.

This proves another grating pattern: characters verbalizing every thought, as though the audience couldn’t be trusted to understand otherwise. Kids don’t need things spelled out. They’re intuitive.

Anyway, the kid takes the spear and totems, but a gruff-looking Native American intercepts him and recovers the spear. As the boy runs off, the man realizes in horror the totems are gone. Of course, he verbalizes this.

Cut to that night. The boy awakens hearing his dog barking outside. Again, we’re treated to him wandering outside screaming the dog’s name, and verbalizing every thought, “Why are the puppies scared?”

After some grey ooze melts said puppies (off-screen), the boy runs inside to get his father, who lies passed out at the kitchen table. The boy rouses him, but the father dismisses his concerns, not even bothering to go outside. This marks the first instance of what Roger Ebert coined, “the idiot plot,” meaning a plot that only works because the participants behave like idiots.

A few moments later the dad hears a noise and goes outside. Noticing the dog is gone, he starts wandering and screaming the dog’s name.

At this point, the incessant screaming was so annoying I found myself rooting for whatever monster the film was going to proffer.

Dad also verbalizes his train of thought and soon becomes monster food. The kid runs back inside and realizes the monster has burrowed into the cellar. The kid barricades the cellar door and settles back, eyeing it warily.

This scene overflowed with promise. A kid trapped in the middle of nowhere with a monster in the cellar. Despite all the annoying setup, I was intrigued.

But the film cuts to present day—1988. We meet Willy, a precocious pre-teen at his Chicago school where they inexplicably allow dogs. One scene later, he’s in Texas where we realize his father and stepmother have purchased the house from the film’s opening.

Incidentally, that house must be the most soundproof structure ever created. Despite being located in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but desert and mountains as far as the eye can see, the residents can’t hear monsters roaring in their cellar, men screaming for their lives outside windows, or gunshots fired in other rooms. And yet, a single crow caw outside proves deafening, so maybe sound works differently in Texas.

Anyway, Willy soon susses out that there’s a monster in the cellar but his dad doesn’t believe him. Dad also won’t go into the cellar—again, idiot plot—so Willy ventures in one night with a flame thrower and sets up some Home Alone-style booby-traps.

The film is ostensibly based on the short story “The Thing in the Cellar” by David Henry Keller. But said story only comprises a single scene, coming after Willy’s booby traps prove ineffective, where Willy’s dad nails the cellar door open then locks Willy and his infant sister in the room.

That the screenwriters based the movie on this scene, yet shoehorned it in so awkwardly, astounds. Willy’s dad goes from zero to raving madman à la Nicholson in The Shining in the span of a few minutes. He snatches the charms protecting Willy and his sister, barricades them in the room, and physically abuses his wife in the process.

I can imagine younger viewers being confused here. Not because they’re not smart enough to understand, but because they’re not yet cynical enough to recognize lazy writing.

How quickly Willy’s dad flips back to “good dad” after seeing the monster proves just as inexplicable.

As bad as it is, The Cellar isn’t a total loss. The creature effects belie the direct-to-video budget, though one wonders how such a lumbering beast could prove so dangerous.

The cast also shines. Suzanne Savoy surprises with a charming performance as Willy’s stepmother. As Willy, Chris Miller engenders as much sympathy as the material allows, his performance never veering into cloying. And Ford Rainey’s supporting turn reminded me more than a little of old Gabby Hayes.

Director Kevin Tenney even includes a surprising shot that reinvigorates an old trope. After the monster somehow possesses a murder of crows to attack a car, causing it to veer off the road and over the obligatory cliff, Tenney gives us a POV shot from inside the car, looking through the windshield as it pitches over the edge and accelerates toward the onrushing ground.

Surprisingly visceral, but hardly enough to make this turkey worth watching. Pre-teen horror is tough. An R-rating allows for elaborate kill scenes and gratuitous nudity to distract the audience. Without them, things like an idiot plot and other instances of lazy writing prove more obvious. Kids will notice them. They’re smarter than you think.