The Cycle is a new Shudder-distributed horror film. Sometimes they are kind of cool (Late Night with the Devil and In a Violent Nature). Sometimes they are not (Verotika AKA Danzig Directs Drunken Dross).
The Cycle is not the worst of the bunch. It has a hook that offers a genuinely interesting premise to hang a movie on. The problem is that there are serious movies and movies that take themselves too seriously.
The Cycle is one of the latter. Instead of embracing its pulpy subject matter, it spends the bulk of its time with characters who all have angst sticks shoved up their bew-tocks as they flounce about the film.
The Cycle
Deborah Ann Woll (Daredevil: Born Again) plays a forensic expert on dead bodies. Jeffrey Donovan (Wrath of Man) portrays a small-town sheriff who brings Woll in to consult on a mysterious murder. Two victims are torn apart, and a third corpse is found at the scene that appears unnaturally preserved…
Jordan Downey wrote and directed The Cycle. He recently helmed a segment in V/H/S/Beyond (2024).
The movie ends up as something that is a cross between The Autopsy of Jane Doe and a 1980s werewolf film of your choice. This is not really spoiler territory because one can ascertain as much from the trailer…
The Downward Cycle
The Cycle’s main flaw is how hard it works to present each character with an emotional core. Emotional cores have become very important to modern films. The problem is that modern films need to compulsively spell it all out instead of leaving room for the viewer to project their own emotions into the proceedings.
Consider Jaws. Brody is out of place and runs into a challenge beyond the scope of his abilities. He tries to make the best decision he can. He gets overridden. People die. He feels guilty. He overcomes his fears to atone for his failures.
Yet, how much of this is spelled out with Brody personally lamenting his situation? Not much. It is mostly shown as a matter-of-course as Brody moves through the story like a multi-dimensional human with highs, lows, humor, frustration, fear and anger.
Or, take Quint — he gets less screentime than Brody but remains a richly emotional character whose entire being is explained in a short monologue that comes on the heels of lighthearted interaction with other characters.
The characters in The Cycle are all one note and constantly depressed. They don’t drunkenly compare their scars for a laugh. They wallow in their scars. Their scars are their entire identity, and they can’t wait to whine about them to others.
It’s like Downey was embarrassed to make a werewolf movie, so he tried to bury it within a story about people with pathological daddy issues.
The Upward Cycle
All that is too bad because when The Cycle briefly realizes the type of movie it needs to be, it borders on fun. The highlight is practical creature effects by Patrick Magee (Jurassic Park III, Men in Black 3 and V/H/S/99).
An American Werewolf in London proved to be hugely influential to Magee, and his idolization of Rick Baker is apparent in his work on The Cycle. The creature is realized in a way that is totally 1980s. Its howls, which are a mix of wolf calls and human screaming helps sell the goofy reality of the monster.
The Cycle contains roughly a five-minute sequence where the creature is unleashed, and it gives a glimpse into what the movie could have been in the hands of someone who didn’t get sidetracked by mistaking brooding characters for interesting characters.
Woll suffers the most with her wet-blanket persona. Her work is not so much a miscast as it is a mistake from the film’s conception. Who wants to watch a mopey asexual woman headline a movie like this?
The obvious comparison to make is Dee Wallace in The Howling. Yet her trauma is not her singular defining characteristic. She is a bright character thrust into a dark world. She isn’t a bombshell, but she draws the viewer in with genuine warmth and interacts with characters in normal ways instead of using them as a captive audience for her issues.
The Cycle Ends
Ultimately, The Cycle wastes a good idea, and it offers little to discuss beyond that. On the other hand, maybe it was all a metaphor for PMS. That almost makes sense…
