The Cycle (2026)

OCTOBER 17, 2026

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: FESTIVAL (TELLURIDE HORROR SHOW)

Since I was hosting most of the movies I saw at Telluride Horror Show (a great fest, I highly recommend if you've never gone!) I had to some research beforehand to prepare myself for the Q&As and such. But for The Cycle I went in totally blind, only knowing that a friend saw it earlier and told me to keep it on my radar. But before I wrote this review I did my due diligence and made sure that the big halfway reveal was out in the open, so don't yell at me if you're unaware what kind of movie it is and kept reading beyond this first paragraph! I have kept it out of the genre tags (you're welcome) but I will be talking about it as if it was something we all knew going in. If you're in the dark and want to stay that way, all I'll say here is that this is a good, if slightly undercooked at times, entry in the "What if an X-Files episode became a feature length film?" sub-genre, one I hope finds its audience and generates even bigger and better things for writer/director Jordan Downey.

Like an X-Files episode, we have a case that sounds simple and becomes more complicated (and, given the nature of the series, perhaps can't be explained "rationally" as Scully might put it) as it goes. Our protagonist is Meg (Deborah Ann Woll), who works at a "Body Farm", where they can tell how long a body has been dead, exposed to the elements, etc. just by the number of maggots that are on them and things like that. She is approached by a young police officer named Ian (Will Hochman) after he discovers the body of her long-missing father, wondering if she can put aside her personal issues to help him solve the case since she's the expert on such things. Given her lengthy estrangement from the man, she refers to him by his name Peter instead of "Dad", so it's just another dead body to her. However as her and Ian (and his father, played by Jeffrey Donovan) dig deeper into the case, they learn that not only was this not a simple murder, but may directly relate to the reasons he up and left Meg and her mother (Gretchen Corbett from Let's Scare Jessica to Death!) all those years ago.

So if you're an actual X-Files fan, think of it as "Beyond the Sea" crossed with (we're gonna get into spoilers here, so last warning) "Shapes", since it turns out - if the title didn't clue you in - that we are dealing with a werewolf. Personally I had no idea it was coming, figuring the title was referring to the bugs that Meg studies so much, but as it turns out, Downey (along with his co-writer Kevin Stewart) gave the title a few meanings. Yes, it's about the bugs, but also (because werewolf) the cycle of the moon, and also the cycle of abuse and neglect. Meg and Ian both have extreme father issues, and it informs what they do for a living and how capable they are at those jobs. The best X-Files episodes (the "monster of the week" ones anyway), like "Beyond the Sea", found a way to tap further into our heroes' backstories and psychological makeup as they proceeded to work the case of the vampire or ghost or whatever the hell, and that's what Downey and Stewart have largely pulled off here.

I say "largely" because there's a very odd chunk of the film where I was sort of left confused by what happened to a major character. It appears as if they died, but the person closest to that character doesn't seem all that much affected by it. I don't know if it was an actor decision or something just missing from the text (or perhaps an unfortunate byproduct of pages being trimmed; always a risk when there's an ambitious, character driven story and producers who just want to get to the next scare), but I started wondering if the character maybe survived after all until their death was briefly mentioned in dialogue 15 minutes later. And then they're never brought up again! It was very weird, and left me kind of distracted for a bit, to the extent that I kind of had to mentally reset myself to re-engage with the movie after spending so much time being puzzled by the vague way someone was removed from the narrative. Not quite "Poochie went back to his home planet", but pretty close.

Part of what helped me get back on board was - YES! - the transformation scene! It's a total love letter to the iconic one from American Werewolf in London, and seeing that kind of practical artistry again on the big screen again after so many years of terrible CGI versions made me so happy. The claws, the snout extending, the rippling along the back... everything you'd want to see from such sequences is accounted for, and we get some great carnage after the fact. The climax drags some, but I didn't even mind all that much because I was still riding the high of seeing this sort of thing done right again. And that's why I assume the trailers won't be hiding the nature of this movie - it's too good of a selling point for horror fans to not show off for a few seconds and lure them in.

Another thing for horror fans: Don "Charlie" Opper from the Critters movies is in it! If the IMDB is correct he hasn't been on screen in over 25 years (thanks to a couple episodes of The Division), so you'd be forgiven if you, like me, didn't even recognize him at first. It's only a small role, playing the owner of a diner that Meg is eating at when we meet her, but along with Corbett's casting it told me that Downey (or at least, his casting team) knows their horror and wants to do right by the fans who have seen so many of these things. We want the familiar actors from our cult faves, we want the practical FX... but we also want characters to invest in, who we don't mind taking that journey with. So when there are a few narrative blunders here and there (nothing crippling, to be clear), it's easy to forgive. We know their hearts are in the right place and they're doing far more right than wrong, so it's all good. It'll be on Shudder by the time you read this, so give it a look!

What say you?

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