Back again with another Jamie Langlands film is The Cellar, where a young woman wakes up to find herself imprisoned in a dark cellar with no idea of how or why she is there. All she can do is find a way to escape.
The Cellar is a tale of two struggles — one outward (as main girl Abigail tries to escape), and one inward (as she also deals with her inner demons). This is shown through intersecting scenes of Abigail mastering her escape and Alcoholics Anonymous-like group sessions of participants talking about their struggles. With every switch, more and more hints of her troubles background start to emerge and fill in the blank spaces of her capture.
But The Cellar isn’t just storytelling — it is tension-building. Meghan Adara (who plays Abigail) makes us feel that adrenaline rush as she smartly uses a bra underwire to pick a lock and finds hiding spots within the dungeonous prison to evade her captor. All the while, we are lulled into thinking this is a “normal” escape situation — until Abigail sees another woman with devilish eyes. The Cellar has turned into something much darker than I was originally anticipating.
With visions of grassy beige fields, hallucinations, doppelgängers, and black-cloaked figures, Abigail’s situation gained a more sinister outlook; we as the audience, though, are given loads of dark corners and candlelit hallways that promise something evil hidden inside them. The tension of the beginning of The Cellar morphs into tremble-inducing scares, despite their subtlety.
Overall, The Cellar offers a crypt-like comfort that lulls you into a false sense of security while simultaneously drilling confusion and paranoia into your brain. Like Abigail, your worst fears come to life as you discover the darkness isn’t just the cellar labyrinth you’re forced to be in, but your inner traumas as well. With a mysterious quality and well-placed scared, The Cellar makes you appreciate the outside world just a bit more.
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