The Cycle Review: Incredible Practical Effects Elevate This Mystery Horror Movie
by Chris Evangelista · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
Google Discover
A slow-burn into a full-blown creature feature, "The Cycle" benefits from secrecy. The less you know, the more impressive the film becomes. Marketing has avoided telling viewers what "The Cycle" is really about, and while some googling may give you the full answer, I'll do my best to avoid giving the game away. But that's not such an easy feat, because if there's one thing I want to talk about when it comes to "The Cycle," it's a wealth of wonderfully icky practical effects that dominate the back half of the film. Ultimately, director Jordan Downey's horror-mystery is a reminder that no matter how good digital effects may be, nothing beats a practical monster.
A committed Deborah Ann Woll, who has a knack for playing characters who seem like they're seconds away from sobbing uncontrollably, is Dr. Meg Garland, a forensic science expert who runs a body farm where criminal justice students can study decaying human bodies and learn about all the gross and squishy details that come with putrefaction. Right away, Downey and cinematographer Kevin Stewart (who also co-wrote the script with Downey) strike a moody tone full of dark, cold landscapes. The filmmakers are going for a "Silence of the Lambs" meets "Seven" vibe here, with a little "X-Files" and "Twin Peaks" thrown in for good measure, creating a procedural mystery for our heroine to help solve.
Horror fans will likely figure out where The Cycle is leading
An entire family has been brutally murdered — torn apart, seemingly by an animal. And not too far away from the crime scene, the police find a nude dead man by some railroad tracks. As it turns out, the dead man is Meg's long-lost father, who walked out on the family when Meg was still a child. Meg understandably wants nothing to do with the dead man she doesn't even consider him her father anymore, but the mystery is too great to ignore, and soon she's teaming up with local cop Ian (Will Hochman), who works with his father, Marks (Jeffrey Donovan), also a cop — but, interestingly enough, is Ian's subordinate.
Horror hounds are going to be able to sniff out where all this is leading, which makes the round-about way "The Cycle" has of getting to its reveal a tad frustrating. And yet, the film is loaded with such ominous style and takes itself so seriously that you end up appreciating the journey. It would've been very easy for the script to dip into winking parody mode, but instead, "The Cycle" plays things with a completely straight face. You'll either be on board with that, or you won't. I was. Mostly.
It helps that "The Cycle" creates a real sense of weird, eerie dread as it chugs along, complete with Meg grappling with her own inner demons and growing more and more befuddled as the case goes in directions that clash with her scientific way of thinking. Woll is excellent here, making Meg determined but fragile, liable to crack at any moment. It doesn't help that she keeps having nightmares involving her father's corpse.
The Cycle rewards our patience with great practical effects
"The Cycle" rewards our patience with a final act that descends into monster movie mayhem, full of practical gore makeup that looks pretty damn great, especially for what is ultimately a lower-budget affair. I've seen horror movies that cost twice as much as this that don't seem as effective.
As successful as these moments are, "The Cycle" moves just a little too slow for its own good, covering and recovering the same ground and introducing new wrinkles that feel as if they were added to pad the runtime. It's all just a little too low key for my tastes ... until it isn't, and the blood starts spilling in copious amounts. I wasn't entirely sold on the film's emotional hook either, as Meg deals with abandonment issues and tries to grapple with her complicated feelings towards her father.
For all its attempts at something different, "The Cycle" ultimately knows exactly what type of movie it wants to be — which is why the first credit we see when the film cuts to black at the end is for the makeup effects. When I was a budding young horror fan, I would pour over making-of videos featuring the likes of Tom Savini, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Dick Smith, and others; charming nerds who devoted their lives and careers to making monsters real — before over-reliance on digital effects put them all out of work. Whatever flaws it might have, "The Cycle" reminded me of some of that classic makeup work and charmed me. It's nice to know horror filmmakers are still out there trying to recapture some of that old school monster magic.
/Film Rating: 6 out of 10
"The Cycle" is streaming on Shudder October 23, 2026.