Horror cinema does not have a good history of depicting mental illness with anything approaching sympathy, often transforming the mentally ill into monsters to be feared. Arguably that situation remains true for this film in that Paper Spiders is a horror film in the same way One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a horror film. The situations it depicts are horrific, shocking and awful, but they do so without suspense, monsters, jump scares, or any of the tropes of actual horror.

On the surface, Paper Spiders seems to tell the story of a widowed mother’s descent into mental illness, paranoia, and eventual homelessness. However, the true horror is the experience of her intelligent, sensitive, underage daughter who must watch her mother transform into an unrecognizable stranger and who has no recourse for help or support and no ability to alleviate the situation. She sits in the dark at home on prom night, as her mother stopped paying the bills. She has to track her mother down using the car’s GPS when the mother begins living out of her car. When the police are called, she must lie and claim her father is still alive so she will not be taken into custody as an unsupervised minor.

The horror of Paper Spiders is not the slow deterioration into madness but the simple fact that a mentally ill person complicates and ravages the lives of all around them – the neighbor and his family that she thinks is trying to torment her in a fit of paranoid delusion, the first man she has begun to date since her husband’s death, and especially the daughter who loves her who’s forced to become a parentified child.

The genuine strengths of the film are found in two places (among many others). First, the cast delivers. Lili Taylor (most recently known to genre fans as Carolyn Perron in The Conjuring) plays Dawn, the mother, and her depiction of the slow onset of paranoid delusion is pitch perfect. The film is owned, however, by Stefania LaVie Owen (best known to genre fans as Beth, the daughter in Michael Dougherty’s Krampus) as Melanie, the daughter who must watch her mother descend so soon after losing her father. The chemistry between the two is palpable, and the supporting players, from Ian Nelson, playing Daniel, the alcoholic trust fund kid interested in Melanie, to comedian Tom Papa, playing Howard, Dawn’s first date since her husband died, and especially Michael Cyril Creighton as a comically inept guidance counselor (Melody: “I’m here because of my mother.” Mr. Wessler: “Me, too!”) all deliver natural, believable performances.

Second, the cinematography by Zach Kupperstain supporting Inon Shampanier’s direction offers a visually rich, naturalistic tapestry. The only time the film veers towards literalizing the metaphor of experience through phantasmagorical effects is not Dawn’s mental illness but Melanie’s first experience of weed. Instead, each image seems carefully composed. The pair have a gift for establishing shots – the opening scene of a campus tour of USC seen from directly above in which Dawn and Melanie’s yellow umbrella stands out from the crowd of black umbrellas is simply gorgeous, as is the camera following a candelabra through a restaurant to the table where Melanie and Daniel are on their first date. The film is many things, but never boring.

If you are seeking traditional horror, look elsewhere. If you’re seeking nuanced, textured performances (and again, all hail Taylor and Owen), an honest and challenging presentation of mental illness, and a visually interesting drama that is effectively horrifying without being horror, Paper Spiders is a good use of your time.

8 out of 10