The upcoming Shudder original “The Cycle” got a nice boost to its profile when Stephen King called it “special.” It’s not long into seeing the film that one appreciates what the master of horror saw in Jordan Downey’s production. It has echoes of King works from the mythology of something like Salem’s Lot to the investigative nature of recent titles like The Outsider. Most of all, it does something King loved: Finds its skeletons in the closets of the family home, using connections between characters to fuel the horror. “The Cycle” starts as a moody procedural, a gloomy piece of work that feels more like “Mindhunter” or “The Silence of the Lambs” than what the Shudder brand typically promises. Be patient. This has its own King-esque creation to reveal.
Deborah Ann Woll plays Dr. Meg Garland, an expert in criminology who is summoned to what looks like an impossible crime scene. A mother and child have been horribly mutilated and murdered in their home, but it’s the body on the edge of the property that has everyone stumped. It appears dead. Sorta. And the truly weird thing? It’s Meg’s father, who disappeared 34 years ago.
The story of a forensic investigator finding the corpse of her deadbeat dad is an interesting enough inciting incident for a thriller, but it’s the condition of pop’s body that’s the most confusing. He looks like he’s been tortured, repeatedly, and well let’s just say there are other things about this bloated being that don’t exactly add up. As Meg investigates the case, Downey uses the visual language of Fincher procedurals like “Seven” and “Zodiac,” employing a dark blue-gray color palette and giving viewers detailed close-ups of work with evidence. Helping Meg solve both the case of why Meg’s dad left and how he ended up here so much later are a father-son cop duo, played well by Jeffrey Donovan and Will Hochman, two performers who never steal focus but support Woll’s work.
Downey drops in monster movie references to both Frankenstein and Dracula as little crumbs on the way to his big reveal. Without precisely spoiling where “The Cycle” goes, let’s just it lives up to those references, and it does so with remarkable, old-fashioned special effects. It’s funny how the prevalence of CGI has made seeing something impossible that’s undeniably physically sharing the same space with actual human beings all the more captivating. Some of the creature work is a bit rough around the edges, and Downey has a bad habit of using shaky camera and close-up work to disguise that fact, but there are some breathtaking shots of the kind of monster nightmare fuel that simply isn’t seen that often anymore in horror. If you were raised on movies like “An American Werewolf in London” and “The Howling,” this one is for you.
It helps Downey’s efforts that Woll is up to the challenge of this unique project. Not only is she forced to sell the immediacy of the unimaginable, but she also has an emotionally complex arc that she handles sans melodrama. Meg watched her father walk out on her family when she was just a child, disappearing into the night. She blamed him and hated him for most of her life. Figuring out the mystery of what happened to him is both deeply personal and something she almost doesn’t want to solve. When you write people off in your life, it can be exceedingly difficult to write them back in.
It’s also important to note the amplified craft of this film, especially compared to some of the DIY ventures at an event like Fantastic Fest. Sure, some of the camerawork can be frustratingly obscuring in action scenes, but the bulk of the film has a confident, moody visual language, courtesy of cinematographer Kevin Stewart. And Nick Soole’s score is one of the best genre ones of the year, giving “The Cycle” a moody undercurrent even when nothing threatening is happening on screen. It’s hard to overemphasize how this collaborative attention to detail can make a movie like this “special.” We forgive narrative leaps and filmmaking missteps when a team like Stewart, Soole, Downey, and Woll are all on the same page.
“The Cycle” isn’t the first film to transform a family drama into a monster movie, but it feels fresh due to the commitment of its creators. It’s one of those films for which you have to suspend disbelief, which it feels like movie goers used to do more easily than in an era in which every piece of movie magic is deconstructed on social media. Just leave that kind of over-examination at the door and take the ride like generations did with monster movies before. If Stephen King can do it, so can you.
This review was filed from the premiere at Fantastic Fest. It premieres on October 23, 2026 on Shudder.
