Not Every Wound Knows When to Close

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MOVIE REVIEW
The Thing with Feathers
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Genre: Drama, Horror, Psychological
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 44m
Director(s): Dylan Southern
Writer(s): Dylan Southern, based on the work of Max Porter
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Jessie Cave, David Thewlis, Henry Boxall, Richard Boxall
Where to Watch: in select theaters on November 28, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: THE THING WITH FEATHERS takes a familiar theme—grief manifesting into something physical—and pushes it somewhere more unpredictable. It’s not a traditional horror experience, and it’s not exactly a straightforward drama either. Instead, it sits in the uncomfortable middle, leaning into the messiness of grief without softening its edges. That choice gives the film a unique strength, but also leads to some unevenness that holds it back from its full potential. Still, it’s hard to deny that this is one of Benedict Cumberbatch’s most grounded, vulnerable performances in years.

Cumberbatch plays a widowed father simply named “Dad,” and the choice to avoid giving him a more specific identity works better than expected. It allows the character to feel like a vessel of emotions—someone who hasn’t quite rebuilt a sense of self after losing the person who held everything together. He’s hollowed out in ways that aren’t immediately visible, but gradually become impossible to ignore. Grief doesn’t hit him in a single moment; instead, it lingers, stalks, and wraps around him until it becomes something almost tangible.

That tangibility manifests as Crow, a chaotic, intrusive presence that David Thewlis voices with unnerving intensity. Crow isn’t exactly a monster and not quite a hallucination, but something else—a stand-in for the thoughts Dad refuses to say aloud. He taunts, prods, mocks, and occasionally speaks with unsettling clarity. The creature's design mirrors the film’s tone: strange, theatrical, and brimming with symbolism. Whether audiences respond to that approach will depend on their tolerance for metaphor made literal.

The film’s portrayal of grief is neither clean nor poetic. It’s agitated. Fragmented. Often contradictory. That’s one of the film’s strengths—it doesn’t insist on straightforward healing or offer answers. Instead, it focuses on the turbulence of a man trying to hold everything together for his children while quietly breaking down in the corners of the frame. The editing reinforces that feeling, cutting between memories, sketches, and moments of panic that blend into one another. It’s a style that reflects the source material more than a traditional narrative, and that boldness is admirable even when it becomes overwhelming.

The two young actors, Richard and Henry Boxall, bring an ease to the film that prevents it from becoming too theatrical. Their performances capture the confusion and emotional resilience that children often develop when they don’t fully understand the tragedy reshaping their lives. Their presence offers the film its emotional anchor—watching their reactions, small gestures, and attempts at coping gives the narrative dimension that Crow alone can’t carry.

Dylan Southern’s direction leans heavily into atmosphere. The film's visual language feels intentionally claustrophobic, with tight framing and dim, textural lighting that mirror Dad’s mental state. There’s a heaviness to the imagery that communicates as much as the dialogue. While the artistic choices feel purposeful, they also lead to moments when the film’s emotional impact is overshadowed by its style. This is especially true in sequences where the metaphor becomes too literal, creating a push-and-pull between emotional intimacy and visual spectacle.

One of the film's biggest challenges is its pacing. The early sections are strong, immersing the audience in the family’s fractured world, but the middle act loses some momentum as Crow’s presence becomes repetitive. The film circles familiar territory—fear, denial, avoidance—without advancing the story or deepening the character relationships. That repetition is intentional, mirroring grief’s tendency to recur in cycles, but it can also feel like the film is stalling when it should be tightening its focus.

Still, there’s no denying the impact of the performances. Cumberbatch embraces the rawness, allowing himself to be unguarded in a way audiences rarely see from him. Thewlis gives Crow an unpredictability that keeps each interaction tense, and Jessie Cave offers a strong supporting presence that grounds the narrative’s more surreal elements. When all these pieces line up, the film is genuinely affecting.

By the final act, the film successfully reframes its metaphor into something emotionally coherent. Instead of escalating the horror—or leaning into melodrama—it circles back to the central truth the film has been building toward: grief is not something to defeat, but something to understand. It’s a message that doesn’t feel forced, even if the path toward it is uneven.

THE THING WITH FEATHERS swings big, sometimes connecting beautifully, other times stumbling under the weight of its own ambition. The film’s commitment to exploring grief as something messy and relentless gives it a compelling emotional core, even when its structural choices feel imbalanced. For a story that blends the surreal with the painfully real, it’s emotionally resonant, distinct, and carried by a standout lead performance, even if its risks don’t always pay off.

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[photo courtesy of BRIARCLIFF ENTERTAINMENT]

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