Nerdly » HorRHIFFic 2025: ‘The Cellar’ Review

02nd Mar2025

HorRHIFFic 2025: ‘The Cellar’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Meghan Adara, Neil James, Charlotte Marshall, Mickaela Sands, Obie Dean, Tom Clear, Sophie Flack, Wayne Liversidge, Sophie Karl, James Merganser, Abi Mcloughlin | Written and Directed by Jamie Langlands

The feature-length directorial debut of actor Jamie Langlands (A Prelude to Fear, The Caller), The Cellar follows Abigail (Meghan Adara), who awakens to find herself imprisoned in a subterranean chamber. After managing to escape her confinement, she discovers an expansive and labyrinthine network of cellars, patrolled by a masked guard. As she evades her captor, Abigail uncovers a flurry of missing posters – possible evidence that the entire Alcoholics Anonymous group she attended has also been abducted, though the motive behind their imprisonment remains a mystery.

Most of The Cellar plays out, for the majority, without any dialogue. The only dialogue there is takes place in flashbacks to the AA meetings Abigail attends, otherwise, her entire capture and suspenseful escape is largely silent, her fear conveyed in the performance and subtle expressions of actress Adara – who carries that first part of the film alongside a wonderfully tense soundtrack. However…

Come the film’s halfway point, as Abigail makes her escape from the titular cellar in a lift to normality, she is attacked by a red contact-lensed, some might say snake-eyed woman. And that’s where The Cellar starts to unravel somewhat. You see Abigail is trapped once again but this time the capture is less visceral and more cerebral – as she begins to see herself with the same snake eyes, her reflection moving at odds with her. Though Abigail is still locked up. This time in a dark and creaky home which, of course, Abigail just has to explore! But when she does it feels like we’re just retreading the opening half of the film again – only this time the stalk-and-slash feeling of The Cellars is replaced by the ghost story-like corridors of the home.

Abigail’s troubles are intercut with flashbacks to the AA group and the other members that have gone missing – the film cleverly using the missing posters to “intro” the flashbacks at first and then, in the latter half of the film, flashing back to the group as Abigail comes across them in the home she is trapped in. If her fellow AA members were trapped in The Cellar, or worse dead, why are some popping up in the same home as her? It’s a clever way of planting doubt in the audience’s mind – is anything we, or Abigail, experiencing real? Is her sobriety, or lack thereof, affecting her mental faculties? Or, given Abigail can’t seem to be heard on the mobile phone she finds and uses to call for help, is she dead? Reminding me of films like 1991’s In Between, it’s a nice bit of subtle ambiguity that adds some extra depth to the latter half of the film.

There’s an ending to The Cellar that confuses issues further rather than wrapping things up in a nice bow – as Abigail’s captors reveal themselves, claim they’re helping her and then when she refuses their help, they set her “free” with an injection, telling her she’ll regret turning them down. Now that, and what follows – the film’s end coda – are open to WIDE interpretation. If like I pondered, Abigail has succumbed to her addiction has she died and what follows is a purgatory-like experience? Or, if you take things at face value, was the AA group a serial killing (possibly demonic) cult? Or are both things true?

Look I get it. The entirety of The Cellar is a visual representation of Abigail’s battle with addiction. Wrote large on the screen as a horror movie. But the end result is something of a muddle. A little clarity, a little tightening up of the script and story and yes, this could’ve been a fantastic film. However, as it stands… The Cellar instead is an atmospheric, immersive and claustrophobic film that feels a little too much style over substance.