No relation to The Cobweb.
This film provides examples of:
- Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Sarah was born with severely disfigured limbs and uses them throughout the climax to perform strange and horrific feats of acrobatics.
- Abusive Parents: Carol and Mark are emotionally manipulative and controlling guardians whose treatment of Peter is severely disturbing to watch. They were even worse to Sarah, locking her away and leaving her to die because she was born disfigured.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: During the final act, Sarah begs her brother not to leave trapped in the basement again before taunting him that she will always haunt him.
- All There in the Script: Brian's cousin and his buddies are only named in the credits; Kevin is in the bunny mask, Lucious is in the cat mask, and Sean is in the pig mask.
- Ambiguous Situation: The little girl who died trick-or-treating years before the film's start. Was she killed by the parents after discovering Sarah's existence, or did Sarah herself kill her and the parents only buried the body to hide the evidence? Sarah claims the former is true, but she's later revealed to be a Manipulative Bitch, and the parents die before they can give their side.
- Animal Motifs: Spiders for Sarah.
- Ax-Crazy: Between Mark and her, Carol is clearly the more unstable of the two. And Sarah is crazier than even her.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Sarah is the one to dispose of Brian, his older cousin, and his friends when they show up at the house to get revenge on Peter.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Sarah presents herself as wanting to protect her Peter from their insane parents when in reality, she wants to murder them and him after being locked away for so long.
- Bittersweet Ending: The film ends with Peter happily adopted by Miss Devine and free of his abusive parents, but clealy still haunted by the memory of his monstrous sister.
- Black Dude Dies First: Subverted. Miss Devine is the only other surviving character of the film other than Peter.
- Blue Oni, Red Oni: Mark is the calm and cool Blue Oni to his wife Carol's erratic and paranoid Red Oni.
- Body Horror: Sarah was born with deformed limbs, leaving resembling an exaggerated and distended parody of a person.
- Cain and Abel: Sarah is the Cain to Peter's Abel. After being locked away in the basement for years by their parents, she began hating Peter, jealous of the love they showed him and not her.
- Chekhov's Gun: The rat poison. Later in the film, Peter uses it to kill his parents by poisoning their supper.
- Cool Teacher: Miss Devine is kind and attentive to Peter and grows concerned as she learns of his troubled home life.
- The End... Or Is It?: At the end of the film Pete sees what may or may not be a vision of Sarah taunting him that she will always be with him.
- Evil Sounds Raspy: Sarah's real voice is much more guttural than the child-like voice she adopts to fool Peter.
- Freudian Excuse: Sarah was born severely disfigured and so her parents left her to die by locking her in the basement, leading her to develop a deep loathing for both them and her brother, Peter.Sarah: I was born this way and no one loves a monster.
- Hope Spot: While locked in the basement by his parents, Peter hears his teacher Miss Devine show up and tries to get her attention. He nearly succeeds, but his parents are able to play it off as the washing machine.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The film takes place during the week leading up to Halloween.
- Mad Woman In The Attic: Mark and Carol locked Sarah away in the basement for her disfigured appearance.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While ostensibly only suffering from a skeletal deformity, Sarah's unnatural movement, ability to survive what might have been decades locked away, and appearance at the end of the movie imply there might be something supernatural about her.
- Motive Rant: Sarah gives a lengthy, somber monologue on her hatred of her parents for locking her away and her envy of Peter after she disposes of the bullies to reveal the scope of her vengeance.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Miss Devine, who shows kindness and concern to a troubled Peter throughout the film and adopts him at the end.
- Spider People: Sarah greatly resembles a humanoid spider, with long, distended limbs and a trail of dark hair like a line of web.
- Too Dumb to Live: Mark and Carol refuse to act with any sort of sense and behave as sinister as humanly possible, even giving disturbing anecdotes that can be interpreted as death threats to Peter when they know his manipulative elder sister has been in his ear. This gets them killed when Peter poisons them under Sarah's direction.
- Would Hurt a Child: Mark and Carol subtly threaten their son Peter throughout the film. Sarah herself had murdered a young girl in the past, kills Peter's bully during the climax and tries to kill Peter as well.
