The Cycle Review: Deborah Ann Woll's Shudder Mystery Is Clever, But Misaligned

The Cycle aims to splice two different horror subgenres, and as good as it looks on paper, the combination yields mixed results as an experience.

Published Oct 21, 2026, 9:29 AM EDT

Alex is the Senior Editor of Reviews & Prestige Content, overseeing ScreenRant's film reviews as one of its Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics. After graduating from Brown University with a B.A. in English, he spent a locked-down year in Scotland completing a Master's in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh, which he hears is a nice, lively city. He now lives in and works from Milan, Italy, conveniently a short train ride from the Venice Film Festival, which he first covered for SR in 2024.

I'm of two minds about The Cycle – which, ultimately, is quite fitting. The new horror film from co-writer and director Jordan Downey is a subgenre exercise that fuses two different kinds of scary story. One is a creepy mystery about a forensic scientist who investigates the odd appearance of her absentee father's corpse; the other is what she uncovers. I won't name it here directly, because the movie tries to keep a lid on it, but I will say it doesn't do a very good job. It doesn't take much familiarity to guess where we're headed.

Intellectually, this combination is exciting. The Cycle is powered by a couple great ideas that would themselves be enough for a certain type of horror fan to chalk this one up in the win column. Emotionally, however, I'm more conflicted. These two story modes that fit together so neatly on paper come equipped with very different tones, and properly meshing them requires more precise filmmaking than we get here. One overwhelming the other would've been a preferable outcome, but they instead undercut each other, chipping away at their respective strengths.

In no small part due to the lead performance of Deborah Ann Woll, the movie still works. It's entertaining, if a bit overlong, and is certainly stimulating for anyone who likes to think about horror films in the larger context of the genre. But The Cycle has the frustrating quality of not being as good as it sometimes appears to be, and nearly sinks because of it.

The Cycle Is A Good Story In A Very Uneven Package

Meg (Woll) is a renowned forensic scientist who specializes in bodily decomposition. In fact, she works at a place called the Body Farm, which is full of human corpses decaying under all sorts of conditions to further our understanding of decomposition – something I wished the whole movie was about the moment I saw it. One day, a small-town cop makes his way to her office with a highly unusual case, seeking her advice. It concerns her father, Peter (David Myers Gregory), who walked out on her and her mother when Meg was just four.

A mother and daughter were found dead in their home, violently mauled by some unknown animal. Peter was found nearby, out by a stretch of out-of-service railroad tracks. He bore no signs of animal attack, but he'd also been dead much longer. The local police, Ian (Will Hochman) and his father (Jeffrey Donovan), can't figure how he connects to the crime, except that his body was clearly placed there deliberately. They're hoping Meg can glean more from the corpse than Ratterman (Jeb Berrier), their prickly medical examiner, was able to.

...where The Cycle goes is the kind of horror that pushes you out of the narrative, rather than pulling you in.

The Cycle's first act is a strong set-up for a brooding horror-mystery that could lean either supernatural or serial killer, if it wanted to. It's visually grim in an effective way; Woll, though bringing with her plenty of the gumption that's defined her time as Karen in Daredevil, plays Meg as reluctantly haunted by this open question from her childhood. The film leans into seriousness, tonally promising the type of scares that make your stomach sink and skin crawl.

The more Meg uncovers, however, the clearer it becomes that the other half of this story isn't like that. On the one hand, where The Cycle goes is the kind of horror that pushes you out of the narrative, rather than pulling you in. The joy of watching it is in the experience of it as a creative act – admiring the special effects, for example, instead of simply responding to the function they serve. It tends toward silliness, and is best taken advantage of by leaning into it, the way, say, James Wan's Malignant does.

As cinematic experiences, these two things are very different. Had Downey managed to thread this needle, I think I'd be calling this one of the best horror movies of the year. Instead, each time I tried to emotionally invest in Meg and the other characters, I'd find my suspension of disbelief shattered. And vice versa: When I tried to lean back and enjoy the fun, I'd be dragged down by a film playing into the emotional weight of its violence. This back-and-forth was exhausting, and eventually numbing. The runtime started to sag, especially with as long as it takes for the script to finally admit what's really going on.

Aside from Woll, The Cycle's saving grace is that the mystery is actually pretty good. The shifts back into Meg's investigation are welcome, and the film often manages to produce another clever idea that sprung from the basic premise, even after it seems like the ace up its sleeve has already been played. In that way, it's an easy movie to admire, perhaps even to like. But it's a tough movie to love.

The Cycle is available to stream on Shudder from Friday, October 23.