10 Slow Burn Horror Movies With An Underwhelming Pay Off
6. The Cellar (2022)
After the Woods family move into their new home in Shudder horror The Cellar, their teenage daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) disappears in the cellar during a blackout. Understandably spooked by the mystery, her mother (Elisha Cuthbert) takes it upon herself to investigate the sinister secrets that are quite literally carved into the home.
It transpires that the house’s former occupant was an accomplished mathematician who succeeded in creating a mathematical formula that turned the cellar stairs into a stairway to hell when in the dark. However, just as the teenager found her way in, a demon found its way out.
Alongside an anti-climactic monster reveal, The Cellar’s ending likewise suffers greatly from a twist that plays fast and loose with its own logic.
After saving her family by trapping the demon back in the cellar, the mother opens the front door to reveal the whole house is now in hell. With only a cursory reference to the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment to account for why this happened, this final twist comes across as a last-minute addition rather than a thought-out plot point.
Had the script spent more time exploring the implications of this theory, the finale could've caused existential chills instead of indifferent shrugs.