The Cycle

cob3.5

okay rock my shit why don’t you

Elric Kane4.0

This may be my favorite blind watch at Beyond Fest since ‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’- no spoilers- don’t read up on at but it’s a throwback, practical FX procedural RIPPER. Great texture & tension building throughout but with a real deal payoff. So stoked for Jordan as his first feature showed such ingenuity and this Knocks it outta the park. Shudder should go wide with this film as it’s got legs!

SeanChandler3.5

The best way to watch The Cycle is knowing as little as possible, so I’m going to keep this vague.I saw it at Fantastic Fest 2026, and I got to talk to Deborah Ann Woll on the red carpet before the screening, which as a huge Daredevil fan was amazing. All I knew going in was that someone had gone missing in an investigation into some dead bodies. That’s the setup for the first half, which plays as a murder investigation procedural. You buy into the characters and the backstory of the trauma carried by Woll’s character, Meg, and you start getting answers about what caused some of her family trauma. Then the back half goes full horror. It’s a genre shift with a big twist, and I honestly don’t know how they’re going to market this without giving it away.In the Q&A, the filmmakers (director Jordan Downey and company) described it as David Fincher plus another genre, and talked about using the audience’s expectations against them. It works. The transition feels tonally consistent with itself, which is hard to do when you’re changing genres halfway through. Once it commits to the shift, the effects are all practical. They shot for 25 days with the cast, then spent another 25 days on nothing but the practical effects, and that extra time shows. They look interesting and horrifying.Someone in the Q&A called it the best movie of its kind at keeping a secret in 25 years. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s a genre without a lot of strong entries, so realizing what I was actually watching was a very pleasant surprise. Not everything works. A few parts were actively confusing, and I was several days into the festival and tired enough to wonder if I’d missed something. But other people I talked to had the same reaction, so I don’t think it was just me.Still, the procedural, the horror and the character work all worked for me as a whole. Individual scenes might be confusing or familiar, but I had a really good time with it.