Movie Review
The Cycle
8/10
TLDR
Shudder’s The Cycle is a patient, rain-slicked procedural that grows real teeth in its back half. Deborah Ann Woll is terrific, the practical effects are gloriously gross, and the less you know going in, the better.
Where to watch: Streaming on Shudder and AMC+ October 23
The Facts
Synopsis: When the body of a man missing for thirty-six years is discovered at the scene of a horrific crime, it’s up to his estranged daughter to unravel his dark past.
Director: Jordan Downey
Stars: Deborah Ann Woll, Jeffrey Donovan, Will Hochman, Jack Doolan, Carl W. Crudup, Jeb Berrier, Gretchen Corbett, David Myers Gregory
Rated: Not Rated
Running Length: 111 minutes
The Thoughts
I love a good police procedural, and I go absolutely gaga for a creature feature, so The Cycle combining the two felt like somebody made it specifically for me. As far as Shudder originals go, it can be easy to dismiss them as quick buys from a festival fire sale, the titles nobody else snapped up fast enough. Every now and then, though, Shudder lands a real winner, and The Cycle is one of them.
River, the Jane Levy slasher Shudder had lined up, was another. It opened TIFF’s Midnight Madness in September and went over so well that Universal and Blumhouse paid more than $10 million to put it in theaters in January instead. The Cycle gets to stay on Shudder, which is great news for subscribers.
The Cycle fills the void left by how rarely anyone makes movies like Seven, Zodiac or The Silence of the Lambs anymore, but it absolutely has its own thing going. I went in knowing only the logline, and I’m glad I did, because this one goes to places I had no idea it would. I won’t be spoiling a thing, so read on with confidence, or bookmark this and come back after you’ve watched it.
The Cycle Brings a Body Farm to Shudder
Dr. Meg Garland (Deborah Ann Woll, Escape Room) is a forensic anthropologist who runs a body farm, where FBI agents learn how human remains break down so they can crack cold cases. She’s called to a small coastal town where a mother and her daughter have been brutally killed, seemingly by an animal. Near the scene, police find the body of a man who’s been missing for 36 years. It’s Meg’s father, Peter (David Myers Gregory, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile), who walked out on the family when she was a little girl. Nobody can explain how he got there or what he has to do with the murders.
Meg teams up with a father and son on the local force. Ian (Will Hochman, Master) is the department’s friendly captain, which means he outranks his own dad, Marks (Jeffrey Donovan, Surrounded). Together they dig into her father’s past to figure out who might be killing in the present.
Jordan Downey directs from a script he wrote with his longtime partner Kevin Stewart, who also shot the film. Like many filmmakers who started out on rocky ground, Downey has found his voice over several films. He went from ThanksKilling, the micro-budget cult horror comedy he made in college, to the medieval horror of The Head Hunter and that fantastic “Stork” segment of V/H/S/Beyond. What’s emerged is an artist who knows a good scare when he sees one and also knows the value of waiting for it.
Like the Pilot for a Show I’d Binge
That patience is what I appreciated most. What I miss about those films mentioned above is their willingness to let us sit in the stillness and discover the clues along with the characters. That kind of detective work isn’t always fast or easy, but it makes the payoff that much more satisfying. Downey has cited The X-Files and the first season of True Detective as inspiration, since both hint at horror before they fully commit to it, and you can feel that here.
In fact, for the first fifty minutes, I got the distinct feeling I was watching the pilot for a limited series on Netflix or HBO. Characters are introduced like we’ll be settling in with them for a while, and there’s a real sense of permanence to this world of forensics on the body farm. It’s a rain-slicked, slow-burn procedural that trusts you to keep up.
A lot of that mood comes from Stewart’s photography, all damp blues and grays, with fog rolling off dark water and close-ups of grisly evidence that would make David Fincher proud. It was shot around Astoria, Oregon, the same town where The Goonies went looking for treasure, and the gloomy coast gives it the chilly feel of a Nordic noir. Nick Soole’s uneasy score hums along underneath even the stillest scenes.
Deborah Ann Woll Makes You Believe It
Woll is a confident, competent lead, and I believed she was this person in this profession from her very first scene. Her reactions to each new discovery are believable and potent, so we experience the shock and horror alongside her. Through the micro details she brings out, Woll gives real emotional weight to a premise that could easily have flown off the rails.
I also loved that the film doesn’t make Meg a broken person just because her father walked out when she was four. She isn’t an addict drinking the pain away, and nobody tries to turn one of the men into her love interest. She’s moved on, and it’s professional curiosity, not some old wound, that makes her want to know more.
The supporting cast is strong across the board. Donovan plays Marks as an easygoing, everyday guy, and Hochman makes Ian the department’s friendly face. Meg’s world-weary (read: cantankerous) mother, Joni (Gretchen Corbett, The Rockford Files), is a hoot, and horror fans should keep an eye out for Don Keith Opper from Critters, too. That makes sense, since Downey loves Critters enough to have made his own short, Critters: Bounty Hunter, back in 2014.
There’s also excellent work from Gregory as Peter, seen in flashbacks as Meg recalls her final images of him and again later in a series of grainy videos. Gregory has some dark, gruesome places to go, and he isn’t afraid to push himself to get there.
When the Procedural Grows Teeth
It’s a macabre film, especially in the final forty-five minutes, when it becomes a white-knuckle creature feature, easily morphing out of the procedural it had been so patiently building. The whole thing is incredibly dark, brutal stuff, and the violence is often genuinely terrifying. Either I wasn’t paying close enough attention or Downey and Stewart’s screenplay is just that good, but I was genuinely surprised by the film’s major turning point. I hope nobody spoils it for you beforehand, because it’s a whopper when it lands without warning.
The makeup effects come from Patrick Magee, whose work includes V/H/S/94 and two of its follow-ups, and they’re practical. In an age of digital effects you can practically see buffering, there’s something wonderful about gore somebody sculpted and covered in goo (so so so much goo) by hand. Downey gives Magee the lion’s share of the credit, and the effects give the creature stuff some real punch. How can you ever go wrong with that?
If there’s a weak spot, it’s the script once the chaos kicks in. The mid-movie pivot is ambitious and fun, but the screenplay has a harder time connecting the dots afterward, with a few character motivations getting muddy and the dialogue thinning out in the back half. Logic takes a back seat to mayhem for a stretch. It reminded me of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, another handmade horror movie that starts with a body on a table and ends up somewhere else entirely. Like that one, the ride is worth a few loose threads.
Leave the Lights On
Look past the gore and there’s a sad story about the weight of family secrets and the grief that comes with a decades-old disappearance and all the questions it leaves behind. The title isn’t subtle about it. The past has a knack for catching up with us, and Meg has to face hers in the most literal way imaginable.
Stephen King, who says he doesn’t usually push horror movies unless they’re his own, called it “The Thing meets The Silence of the Lambs,” and that’s about the biggest, warmest hug a mid-budget indie could ask for. If you’re a horror fan with a Shudder or AMC+ subscription, The Cycle is a must-watch tonight. I had a blast with this one, and when the credits rolled, I suddenly wasn’t nearly as eager to turn off the lights.
The Final
The Cycle takes its time, then takes off. Patient, grisly and genuinely surprising, it’s the rare streaming original that lives up to Stephen King’s seal of approval, so go in blind and maybe leave a light on.
8/10
Where to watch: Streaming on Shudder and AMC+ October 23
Reviewed by Joe Botten
Joe Botten is The MN Movie Man, a Twin Cities film critic writing spoiler-free reviews since 2012. He also writes for Loud and Clear Reviews, a Rotten Tomatoes approved site. Find him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
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