Film Title: The Thing With Feathers
Director: Dylan Southern
Screenwriter: Dylan Southern
Based on: Grief is the Thing With Feathers (Max Porter)
Production Companies: MK2
Release Date (USA, Sundance): January 25, 2025
Capone's Rating: 4.5⭐ out of 5⭐
Principal Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Boxall, Henry Boxall
I have to get something off my chest.
Most modern horror fans might take issue with it, but I need to say it.
I've about had it with trauma horror. Protagonists' whose core characteristics are shorthanded with references to abuse, deaths of loved ones, or compounded microaggressions-we can tell horror stories without these elements, you know? And we can build more thoroughly developed characters. And I have enough actual trauma in my own family-in my own personal experience-that I don't want to meet with it every time I enter a movie theater for a horror film.
Okay. All that being said:
The Thing With Feathers is explicitly and directly about grief after the passing of our protagonist's spouse. His two young children, boys, miss their mother-and dad thinks it best to hide his emotions from them for fear of making things worse for everyone. But as we all know from other trauma-infused horror stories, grief deined will manifest as something spooky. The protagonist's reification of emotion is a monstrous thing with feathers-a crow. And he seems to know it's not real, but he responds as though it is, a clear sign of stress- or grief-induced psychosis. And it's not real for us, either. It signifies his pain, and it talks him through it.
To get the right vibe for The Thing With Feathers, think Babadook (2014) with more therapy and the saddest montage since the opening of Up (2009). And despite what I said above about tiring of trauma-inspired horror, Dylan Southern's effort works very well. Benedict Cumberbatch and the Boxalls (Richard and Henry) are fantastic-the latter pair much less annoying than the kid in Babadook, whose awfulness admittedly was core to the mother losing her grip. Cumberbatch in particular shines as a man overcome by fear of forgetting his wife, not wanting to let her go. The most profound concept the film explores through our protagonist's experience is the distinction between grief and despair: Grief is natural and appropriate; despair is neither.
Four point five of five stars.
