Cobweb Ending, Explained: What Happened to Sarah?

‘Cobweb’ is a horror thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat till the very end. The Samuel Bodin directorial follows an 8-year-old boy Peter (Woody Norman) who starts to hear voices from behind the wall of his room. Meanwhile, his emotionally distant parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) seem to be hiding secrets that could change their lives forever. The deep and dark secrets are eventually revealed, and the film ends with a confusing shot. So if you are wondering about the ending of ‘Cobweb,’ we have got you covered! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Cobweb Plot Synopsis

Peter, an 8-year-old boy, faces bullying at school and parental neglect at home. The only person he connects with is his sympathetic substitute teacher, Miss Devine. One night, he starts hearing tapping sounds from the wall in his room and tells his parents about it, who undermine the occurrence as his ‘imagination’. But the knocking continues and soon Peter is approached by a voice named Sarah who is trapped in the walls.

Sarah accuses Peter’s parents of being evil and manipulating him. She even convinces him to push his bully, Brian, down the stairs at school, leading to his expulsion. Meanwhile, the parents, Carol and Mark, keep neglecting Peter’s concerns and start acting in a weird way to hide their own secrets. Sarah eventually convinces Peter that she is his sister who has been locked in a chamber behind the walls by their evil parents. She wants Peter to murder their parents and set her free.

Cobweb Ending: What Happened to Sarah?

Persuaded by Sarah, Peter starts to believe that his parents are evil and would treat him the same way they did with his sister. Blinded by his fear, he mixes rat poison in the soup that his mother prepared for dinner. Mark dies right in front of his family, puking blood all around. Carol, while still in her senses, tries to call 911, but finds the telephone line cut. Meanwhile, Peter rushes to set his sister free. Carol brings up a knife and runs after her son as he climbs the stairs.

But the effect of the rat poison kicks in and she dies in a brutal way, falling down the stairs with the knife slashed in her stomach. Peter takes the key to the chamber from his dying mother, who warns him not to set his sister free.
However, he does the opposite and opens the chamber, letting Sarah out, who is revealed to be a monster. It turns out that Sarah was born with a mysterious condition with long limbs and sharp teeth. Her parents were scared of her and locked her, first in a pit and then in a cage, and she had to spend all her life with spiders and cobwebs. She is now out for blood and is going after anyone and everyone who comes in her way.

Meanwhile, Brian and his cousins arrive at Peter’s house seeking revenge. One by one, each of the boys is brutally murdered by Sarah, while Peter keeps hiding under his bed. Sensing trouble, Miss Devine also reaches the house and is horrified by the bloodbath that ensues. As Sarah continues to wreak havoc and goes after Miss Devine and Peter, the two team up and are eventually able to lock her up in the cage. By the end, Peter moves into a new house, but the trauma from the horrific incidents and the guilt of killing his own parents keeps haunting him. As Sarah tells him in the end, “We are family Peter. I’ll always be with you.”

Did Sarah Escape from the Cage in the End?

No, Sarah did not escape from the cage in the end. As the film ends, Peter sees flashes of shadows, spiders, and his sister’s long hair in his room. In the final shot, Sarah is seen lurking behind Peter as looks at her horrified. However, all this is a part of Peter’s imagination and Sarah does not escape from the cage. Throughout the film, Sarah is seen trying to manipulate Peter into believing that they are a family and share the same blood.

Peter, being a lonely and sensitive child, finds companionship in her and starts believing everything she says. The visuals that he sees at the end are due to the emotional wounds that he suffered after killing his family. Peter now believes that he did actually turn out to be like his sister as he has murdered both his parents. He also suffers from the guilt of somehow being responsible for Brian and his cousins’ deaths and for putting his teacher in grave danger. The pain and suffering from the incident are going to haunt him forever. And that is why, Sarah is always going to be at the back of his mind, despite being locked away in the cage.

Who Killed the Missing Halloween Girl?

In one of the early scenes in the film, Peter wants to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, but his parents do not allow him. Mark reveals that a girl from a house across the lane went missing four years ago when she went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, and they do not want Peter to meet a similar fate. During one of her conversations from behind the wall, Sarah reveals to Peter that the missing girl was killed by Carol and Mark.

As the girl approached their house for trick-or-treating, she somehow managed to catch a glimpse of Sarah. Carol and Mark, who wanted their monstrous daughter to remain hidden from the world, killed the girl and buried her in their backyard. So while Carol and Mark were not after Peter’s life, as Sarah claimed, they did kill an innocent girl. Peter comes across the skull of the girl after Sarah tells him to dig in the backyard. This instance becomes a major turning point in the film as at this very moment, Peter starts to believe everything his sister says and gets manipulated by her. He begins to accept that his parents are awful people who are waiting for their daughter to die, and will put him in the same pit once Sarah is dead.

Why did Carol and Mark Ignore Peter’s Call for Help?

As soon as Peter starts hearing the knocks on his walls at night, he reaches out to his parents. The two, however, choose to turn a blind eye to his thoughts and convince him that it is all a part of his imagination. Every time a scared Peter tells Carol and Mark about the noises in the wall, the child is told that it is all in his head. The pattern takes a toll on Peter, and he even draws a sketch in his class with the message ‘Help Me.’ Bothered by the drawing, his teacher, Miss Devine, contacts his mother to check on him. Carol, instead of helping her child, behaves in a weird manner and again labels the drawing as a part of his ‘overactive imagination.’

Peter later explains that he made the drawing as the voice from the wall is asking for help. This lays the foundation of his connection with Sarah and he starts to confide in his sister more than his parents. Anticipating no help from his own parents, Peter calls Miss Devine for help, but the conversation is heard by Carol. Again, instead of being concerned about her son, Carol convinces Miss Devine that everything is well and Peter just called her as he misses her.

Mark, too, behaves rather harshly with him and grounds him into a dark basement when he is expelled from school. He even decide to get him homeschooled so that he does not go out and spill their family secrets to other kids or teachers. All through the film, the couple behaves in a creepy manner, which further cements Peter’s trust in his sister’s claims. Peter’s parents’ unfair treatment of him is born out of fear that their secret will be out, ruining their lives.

Neither did they fairly treat their daughter, nor their son. Things could have turned out to be different if they handled Sarah’s condition well and did not just let her rot in a cage. Similarly, if they were a little more sympathetic to their son, their deadly fate could have been avoided. Their lies and lack of concern were bound to have fatal consequences, which culminated in their brutal murder by their own kid.