Spoilers for The Cycle
The Cycle, directed by Jordan Downey, is just in time for Halloween as this creature feature delves into a new, very gory, interpretation of werewolf horror. This crime horror follows a forensic anthropologist named Meg (Deborah Ann Woll) as she finds out about her estranged father Peter Stump’s (David Myers Gregory) recent death and the mysterious circumstances around it. As Meg becomes more involved with the case, the weirder it gets, leading her to that unexplainable and horrific truth her father thought he would take to his grave. While The Cycle leans into the realism of the procedural plot line at first, it helps the unexpected body horror akin to the werewolf subgenre shine even more when shown.
The Cycle is able to blend the elements of a crime thriller and a gory body horror very well, it also helps that the characters affected by these events are not shallowly written in the slightest. Each of the characters that the audience meets are either mentally, physically, or at times, both, affected by this horrific monster. The story is very strong, leading you down a procedural investigation through the first thirty minutes when Meg finds out about her estranged father’s death and mysterious events surround it, one of them being he wasn’t the only one found dead; a mother and daughter apparently attacked and killed by a rabid animal on the property judging by the horrific state of the bodies. What made the events even more unusual is that Meg’s father’s body, found on the same property, did not share the same wounds. Because of Meg’s work in forensic investigation, she is asked on the case by a local police officer investigating the case Ian (Will Hochman) and whether or not she would like to examine her father’s body, to which she agrees with some hesitancy at first. Meg declares her father’s death a suicide, but after an horrific incident at the morgue in which Ian is attacked and killed by the same mysterious creature, Meg and Peter’s father Luietenant Marks (Jeffrey Donovan) have to work together to uncover the brutal animal behind these events and why Peter might be connect to it.
I really enjoyed where this film went with the exploration of Meg’s relationship with her estranged father, Peter, as it unravels into a series of unfortunate events as the past gets further and further revealed. After Meg discovers that her father left her and her mother Joni (Gretchen Corbett) abruptly, her mother changed their names and moved towns to not allow Peter to find them again. It is because of these and the video tape shown at the end of the film explaining why Peter had left them that the audience and Meg are left with a bunch of what ifs, which could feel like we are back where the film began but the ending shows that Meg is seeking answers rather than running from them like we seen in the beginning of the film. Like I stated earlier, this film was able to blend the familial themes of a family drama with gory undertones and body horror similar to likes of The Thing and Alien. The Cycle is not afraid to get dirty and bloody one bit, so much so, I felt as though I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire film, not knowing whether or not any of the main characters would make it out alive. The film shows the werewolf genre at its goriest, giving off parallels to An American Werewolf in London in terms of the werewolf attack but seems to up the savageness of the creature, and how desperately hungry it can be, which I very much appreciated.
4 out of 5 stars.
What kept me from giving this film a solid five-star rating was a couple of unexpected jump cuts that did end up taking me out of the story entirely and I do think the runtime could have stretched to an extra fifteen. That being said, The Cycle is an unexpectedly bloody time that feels like the perfect blend of horror and crime which makes for a gory love letter to the werewolf genre.
Leave a Comment