Movies
[BD Review] ‘The Cottage’ Is A Cheesy, Stereotypical Thriller
Review by James A. Janisse
The Cottage is a film that preys upon our fears of home invasion, of letting someone into our lives and having that person violate us and our family. David Arquette plays Robert, a quiet romance novelist who moves into the guest house (cottage? I guess) behind the Carpenter family’s house. At first it seems like he’ll be a good match for them – despite their apparent wealth, they claim that they need the extra cash, and Arquette makes a first impression as a quiet and polite, if a little awkward, guy. But this living arrangement quickly turns into a nightmare for the family, especially the pair of teenage daughters, as Robert’s creep signals grow louder and clearer.
This movie is a pretty straightforward suspense film with some culty elements and sacrificial rites mixed in for good measure. It does a good job building the menacing threat that Arquette’s character becomes. Robert’s not exactly consistent and some of his actions seem abrupt, but Arquette works with what he’s given – this man is not an amateur, and his professionalism shows. The family, played by lesser-known actors, keep up with him onscreen, with Kristen Dalton and Victor Browne as the worried parents and real-life sisters Morissa and Alana O’Mara as the angsty teenage girls Danielle and Rose.
Despite the story’s lack of tangents or frills, it still seems cobbled together sometimes. It turns out that Robert is running a harem of petite teenage girls who he’s apparently brainwashed into killing their families and pledging their love to him. There’s not any further explanation given to this side of the story, and it doesn’t necessarily need a whole backstory explained to the audience in precise terms, but the way this plot line is introduced is jarring and inconsistent with how it evolves later on.
Other scenes are apparently pointless at first, like when we see Rose’s social situation at school or Danielle’s romance with her father’s music student. It turns out that these elements are only in place to provide a higher body count later on, during the film’s climax that finally brings Robert’s madness into full light. The scene’s sacrificial wedding unravels into the film’s final moments, when people just start running and driving around the woods without any direction, finally culminating in an ending that lacks resolution or satisfaction.
For quite a while, The Cottage seems like it will be a fulfilling movie. It’s shot well, the cast is talented, and there is some legitimate terror in the fact that Arquette, a guy who exudes a certain sort of slimy sexuality, is within a stone’s throw of these teenage girls and their swimming pool. The fact that it fails in the end is probably because it’s screenwriter Nick Antosca’s first feature film. Or maybe it’s because the film remains relatively timid despite its skeezy antagonist. Had it gone for all-out depravity, it might have ended up being notorious or at least memorable but as it stands, The Cottage is a cheesy stereotypical thriller that squanders the effective set-up it begins with.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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