#OUT OF THE CELLAR PROFESSIONAL#

His general lack of distress is odd, and his role is largely passive. She doesn’t overplay her hand as the matriarch in distress, but it is clear that she is the one in charge of this story.īrian is a fairly ineffectual dad, though. It’s a welcome return from her to the big screen, after spending much of the past 15 years on TV.

#OUT OF THE CELLAR PROFESSIONAL#

(Think Poltergeist) It allows for the mystery and dread to rebuild and some proper paranormal investigation to occur.Ĭuthbert manages to pull off the stressed-out professional mom, who is having a hard time dealing with the mounting circumstances. The rebellious teen vibes that come on so strong early in the film pay off here, which was a relief, as the angry teen came off initially as a cliche. The initial structure of the disaffected and surly teen is a structurally sound method for allowing for a runaway teen. The equation is an incantation, and it has loosed the evil in the house upon the family, as Ellie mysteriously disappears in a descent into the cellar in a response to a power outage created by the spirits. It doesn’t take the kids long to tire of this odd recording, but what has been initiated can’t be undone. Ellie and Steven find a mysterious phonograph stashed in a closet, and when played, rather than music a voice reads out an equation, followed by a countdown. In what would turn out to be a terrible error of house-move planning, both Keira and Brian leave the children behind on the first night in the house in order to finalize an advertising campaign. Upon entering the home, Ellie curiously goes into the basement only to have the door close behind her, giving the first taste of a haunting. Ellie is immediately aghast and animatedly makes her disapproval known. Into this world of evil mathematics enters advertising consultant Keira ( Elisha Cuthbert, The Girl Next Door, House of Wax), her husband and business partner Brian ( Eoin Maken, The Forest), her surly teenage daughter Ellie (newcomer Abby Fritz), and her aloof younger son Steven ( Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady) who move into a decaying stately manor in rural Ireland. That which is beyond the comprehension of most minds must be the province of some unfathomable cosmic force. Math is hard, and it would not surprise me that it could be used in rites used to summon unspeakable ancient evil. Granted, maybe that was just me, but this hit home to my equation-addled brain. It is all-powerful and what you don’t understand about it makes it that much more terrifying. OK… make that ask the sixteen-year-old me, who struggled with the aforementioned trig. Rose (Marie Mullen) in The Cellar (2022) The Equation on a wax record in The Cellar (2022) The Equation carved into the cellar floor in The Cellar (2022)Īsk any high school junior struggling with trigonometry. Something ancient, something that has been known… by many names. A darkness that has existed since before the universe began. but all he succeeded in doing was bringing darkness into the world. Mathematics are supposed to make sense of the Universe, to make order from chaos. A physicist uses an arcane equation to save his dying son but ends up damning himself and dooming the family that has just moved into the mansion in which he disappeared. The Cellar, which debuted at SXSW 2022, feels on the surface like a fairly conventional haunted house film, but it produces some fairly clever takes on the traditional model. Elisha Cuthbert and Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady in The Cellar (2022)

Out of the cellar