Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a horror film from 2022,
titled The Cellar. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
The Woods family is moving into their new home in the countryside.
Keira and Brian are very proud of the house they've bought for their children,
and their son Steven is excited as well, but their daughter Ellie is a different story.
She hates having left her friends behind and feels disconnected from her parents,
thinking they don't understand her. This house called "Xaáos" is very particular. There's an
old painting of a man with a finger raised, and letters from an unfamiliar alphabet with a
triangle under them which are placed above every door except for one that just has a pentagon.
When they check out the cellar, they don't find it very interesting, but on their way out, the
door gets closed before Ellie can leave. There's something wrong with the lock that won't let her
open it again, and when she feels something in the dark approaching, she begins getting scared.
Fortunately, the key is hanging right next to the door, so Brian uses it to let her out.
In the evening, Keira asks Ellie to babysit Steven because she and Brian need to go to the office for
an emergency meeting. While Ellie is on the phone with an old friend, she suddenly gets jump-scared
by a strange figure: it's just Steven, wearing a cloak and a weird-looking skull that he found in
a hidden compartment in the rec room. The family hadn't known about this hidden compartment so
Ellie checks it out and finds a plaque in it that says "solve et coagula", an old record player,
and an abacus. Steven says he's heard the house used to be owned by a witch that made a pact with
the devil, then asks to try the record player. Ellie gets it to work, and the recording plays
the voice of a man reading the equation written on the record before it starts counting. A few
hours later, a strange breeze comes from under the cellar door and cuts off power in the entire
house. Ellie calls her mother for help, and Keira tells her to go down to the cellar to check the
circuit breaker. Too scared to enter such a room in the dark, Ellie says she can't do this,
so Keira tells her a little trick of hers she uses when she needs to clear her mind: she counts.
Keira guides Ellie through the phone, encouraging her with each step she takes and counts. Ten
should be the last step, but when Ellie reaches it, she closes her eyes and falls. On the other
end of the line, Keira can hear her counting up to thirty and not responding to anything she says,
so both Keira and Brian hurry to return home. When they get there, they can't find Ellie anywhere in
the house, so they call the police. A quick search of the surrounding woods is done to no avail,
and since there isn't evidence of any crime happening and Ellie has run from home before,
the cops just tell the parents to wait for news since she's probably at a friend's house. In the
morning, the family asks some neighbors for their help and they go into the forest to search again,
but the result is the same. Brian understands that Ellie had been mad with them so it's natural
that she ran away, but Keira doesn't think that's the case - she's sure something happened to Ellie
because of how eerie her voice sounded while counting. The next day, Keira begins hanging
up missing person signs and forgets to pick up Steven at school until the teacher calls her.
Once her son is with her, Keira goes to the police station to see if there is any news,
but the detective doesn't have much to say. They've checked security cameras at
bus and train stations, they also called Ellie's friends, but there are no leads,
especially since they haven't found her phone either. The only important thing the detective
can comment on is the fact that Ellie has been bullied and harassed on social media for a while.
Feeling guilty because she didn't know that, Keira asks for forensics to come to check the cellar,
because she's convinced her daughter didn't run away. Once again, the detective must remind
her that since this isn't a criminal case, he can't do more. When she goes back home,
Keira notices the phrase "solve et coagula" is carved above the front door, so she decides
to search for it on the internet while Steven makes his ball bounce against the cellar door.
The search results reveal this phrase is connected to old alchemy and means "dissolve and coagulate".
The pictures related to it show a five-pointed star and a picture of a weird snake. With her
curiosity piqued, Keira calls Steven over, and her son joins her after dropping his ball near the
cellar. Steven tells his mom that nothing out of the ordinary happened the night Ellie disappeared,
the only thing they did differently was to turn on the record player. Considering it unimportant,
Keira puts her attention back on the computer to check Ellie's social media, where she finds out
her daughter had gotten an anarchist tattoo that she never told her family about. Afterward, Keira
decides to check the cellar again. She stares at the pentagon above the door for a moment before
going inside with a light tube. This time, she notices there are roman numbers on the steps and
an equation at the end of it, matching the one on the record player. But the most shocking surprise
comes when the tube's UV light reveals a bunch of disturbing faces painted on the wall. This
is enough for the cops to finally send a forensics team, of which one of the men accidentally pushes
Steven's ball inside the cellar. Unfortunately, the cops don't find any other clues and the only
thing they can say is that the painting had been there since the fifties. When asked about the
history behind the house, Brian explains they know nothing about it except that it used to belong
to an old lady and they bought it very cheap. Night falls and the whole family goes to sleep,
but Keira is woken up by Steven, who has wetted his bed. After changing his sheets, Keira goes
to the bathroom to listen to her daughter's voice on the answering machine to find a little comfort.
But suddenly, Keira can hear the sound of Ellie's voice counting coming from somewhere else:
the sink pipes. The voice can still be heard when she leaves the bathroom, so Keira follows it until
she discovers it comes from the cellar. When she enters it, she accidentally kicks Steven's ball,
which begins falling down the stairs and the sound of it bouncing goes on for much longer
than it should take it to reach the last step. Keira turns on the light and goes downstairs too,
but she doesn't see the ball anywhere. In the morning, Brian wakes up and finds Keira never
came back to bed. He goes looking for her and finds her staring at the symbols above the doors,
she also has the equation from the cellar written on a piece of paper. While he understands feeling
useless, Brian doesn't think obsessing over some random symbols will help. Afterward, Keira calls
her realtor to ask for information about the previous owner. Sadly, he only knows that she was
the daughter of a well-known academic who owned the house originally, but he promises he'll try
to find out more. Still wanting something to do, Keira begins taking pictures of the symbols above
the doors before going to work. She sends the picture to her secretary and asks her to search
for their meaning while she attends a meeting, but her worry doesn't allow her to pay much attention,
so she leaves as soon as she arrives. On her way out, Keira is stopped by her secretary,
who lets her know the symbols are Hebrew glyphs and they spell "leviathan", a sea creature from
Jewish mythology. Keira goes to pick up Steven at school and finds him bleeding because he got into
a fight when one of his classmates said Ellie is dead. When they get home, Keira searches
the internet for information on the leviathan and finds the drawings match the serpent she had seen
next to the "solve et coagula" article. Next, she decides to try the record player, and as the voice
begins counting, the abacus in the rec room starts moving on its own. Steven begins counting as well
as he walks towards the hidden compartment, which has opened on its own too. Fortunately,
Keira hears him and turns off the record player before rushing to his son and stopping him.
When questioned about what happened, Steven shows no signs of remembering what he just did.
Then, Keira goes to look at the painting of the man with his finger raised. She discovers
that his name is John Fetherston, and the Hebrew glyphs are written on the picture as well. Keira
looks for his name on the internet and finds out his entire family had gone missing in this house
except for the daughter. At that moment, a strange breeze comes out from under the cellar door,
making the power go out. Steven's voice begins crying out for help from behind the cellar door,
so Keira rushes to get him out, but the lock is stuck and she can't find the key.
When she looks through the keyhole, an animal eye stares back at her, and she jumps away only to
find the real Steven in the corridor. Suddenly, the cellar door opens on its own and the power
comes back, revealing the key had been on the floor all along. Keira hangs the key again before
entering the cellar using her phone's flashlight. The door closes behind her as soon as she comes in
so she asks Steven for help, but he's too short to reach the key so he must go grab a chair.
While waiting, Keira tries to look into the cellar again and accidentally drops her phone,
causing whatever is down there to start breathing heavily and come closer. This beast begins coming
up the stairs and Keira is getting desperate to get out - fortunately, Brian arrives just in
time to let her out. Later, Keira tells Brian that she felt a presence down there and that her phone
is gone. She also comments on the fact the Fetherston family had gone missing like Ellie,
but Brian thinks she's seeing things that aren't there. To help her calm down, Biran goes down to
the cellar to look for her phone, but the only thing he finds is a ball of hair. The next day,
Keira goes to the National College of Mathematics, which holds a Fetherston wing, to talk to Doctor
Remi Fournet, a genius mathematician. Keira gives him a piece of paper with the equation from the
cellar and when he reads it aloud, the lights flicker for a second. While solving the equation,
Fournet tells her more about Fetherston: this used to be his office, and he was a colleague of
Erwin Schrödinger, the famous scientist that put a cat in a box and said it was both dead and alive.
Fetherston worked closely with Schrödinger until his son got sick and he disappeared from academic
circles. What happened to him is a mystery, and the only person that knows is his daughter Rose,
who Keira bought the house from, but Rose never talks about it because she never recovered.
Fournet manages to make a graphic that represents the equation and thinks it represents other
dimensions, but this is more complex than anything he's seen before. He'll need time to work on it,
so he promises to call Keira with the results. Sometime later, Keira comes home with a new
cellphone. As soon as she turns it on, she gets a call from Fournet, who says he's been trying
to call her for a while and a strange voice kept picking up, only responding with counting.
Then he explains he's spoken to a colleague about the equation, and he believes it's
related to a branch of mathematics created by alchemists in the twelfth century.
It seems to be some sort of an incomplete sequence or an unfinished incantation, and it's definitely
related to other dimensions. This colleague has also come across a similar equation before in
a house in Belgium where the family vanished in thin air too. Brian comes to check on Keira
while leaving Steven alone in the rec room where the abacus is starting to move on its own again.
Keira shows Brian the information she's gathered: "leviathan" is the serpent of the abyss and the
house is called Xaáos, which is Greek for the void before time, also known as the abyss. Once again,
Brian thinks she's reading too much into decorations, so to make her forget about it, he
tries to destroy the equation plaque. However, the hammer only bounces without even making a dent.
At that moment, the record player begins playing and Steven moves towards the hidden compartment
where he finds a pale-looking Ellie, who keeps on counting while showing glyphs carved on her face.
Steven cries out for help, but when his parents get there, the record player has gotten stuck on
ten, and Ellie is gone, only leaving her phone behind. The next day, Keira gets a call from
her realtor with information on where she can find Fetherston's daughter. Keira drives to a
nursing home where she finds an elderly Rose in a wheelchair inside the chappel, and her nurse warns
her she doesn't speak much nowadays. Deciding to try anyway, Keira tells Rose about Ellie and
asks for her help. After a moment of silence, Rose writes down "leviathan" but explains that
isn't its name. It's one of the seven princes of hell, and her father brought it to this
world to cure her brother's illness. The ritual isn't in just the cellar, it's the whole house.
On her way back, Keira tries to call Fournet, but the line only has static and a voice counting.
Meanwhile, Brian has started to do some research of his own: putting the triangles together with
the pentagon forms a five-pointed star. This star with the glyphs around it represents the demon
Baphomet, the gatekeeper of hell. Its picture shows him making the same hand sign as Fetherston
on the painting, and its arms say "solve coagula" too. When Keira arrives and sees all this,
she realizes Rose is right: the whole house has been designed around it. Keira turns on the record
player to explain that the equation probably opens the gate at the same time Steven loses control of
his drone and follows it down the cellar, counting each step. Baphomet is waiting for him at the
bottom, and Steven screams as the power goes out. His parents quickly go after him but only find the
drone, so they begin searching the house to no avail. When Steven's ball appears bouncing down
the stairs, they start hearing a voice counting and follow it to find their son about to enter the
hidden compartment. They take Steven away to check on him, discovering the boy is burning with fever.
While Brian goes fetch some water, Keira tries to take off Steven's shirt, only to find a start
carved on his chest. Suddenly, Steven says he remembers riding a horned beast before he begins
counting again. Keira goes looking for Brian again and finds him standing in another room,
counting down, and once he reaches zero, he announces it's here. The door to the cellar
opens on its own and strong wind comes out of it as the sounds of Baphomet coming up can be heard.
Keira runs to hide in another room, but the demon finds her, so she runs into the cellar with
a flashlight in hand. The stairs have magically become much longer and there's a door at the end,
so Keira runs towards it to escape the beast. She hides behind a wall at the bottom and waits
for Baphomet to leave through the door before exploring the room. When she finds a tunnel,
she crosses it and is shocked to find a huge open area filled with lost souls that are
walking in line and counting. Among these souls is Ellie, who Keira finds thanks to her tattoo.
Dragging her daughter with her, Keira returns to the stairs, trying to hurry because she can
hear Baphomet coming after them, dropping the flashlight in the process. When they return
to the house, the power is back on and Keira closes the cellar door to keep the beast inside.
The family is all okay, so Keira tells them they should leave, but when she approaches
the entrance, she finds her flashlight on the floor. As her family begins counting,
Keira opens the door to find the long stairs on the other side. Soon Keira begins counting
as well as the house is shown not to be in the woods anymore but on a desolated land.