THE CYCLE is a really interesting horror movie recently added to Shudder, and people have been talking and writing about it very vaguely because it has kind of a switch up that was a big surprise for people who saw it at Fantastic Fest. So I’ll maintain that secret until later in the review, but for the record I went in knowing what it was and still really liked the movie.

Unlike most of the new horror movies I’ve been enjoying lately, there’s not even the darkest of humor here. It’s a grim and unsettling story about a forensic anthropologist investigating a bizarre case that she’s much too close to. Dr. Megan Garland (Deborah Ann Woll, MOTHER’S DAY) – just call her Meg – lives alone, helps out with cold cases as a side gig, works at a “Body Farm” where they study decomposition to try to learn things to help solve crimes faster. She’s giving a friendly tour to some FBI agents when Police Chief Ian Marks (Will Hochman, Blue Bloods) needs to speak to her. We clock from his nervousness that it’s not just about her expertise. She seems professionally curious as he’s telling her about three bodies that were found, but “to be clear, this is why I’m here,” one of them was her father (David Myers Gregory, THE BIKERIDERS).

“May I?” she asks, and flips through the crime scene photos. Not exactly devastated. Her father left when she was 4, she is not forgiving about it, and has flashbacks and panic attacks related to her memories of him. So when Ian does try to get her insights on the case she says no. And then keeps thinking about it.

So she heads to the town of Lester Bay. No state is specified, but it’s filmed in Astoria, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest overcast gloom fits the mood of the story well. Coroner Joe Ratterman (Jeb Berrier, I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE) believes the mother and daughter were torn apart by an animal, but is puzzled why they found Peter Stump (her father according to DNA) nearby, far more decomposed than them. But without maggots? This is a weird case.

Ratterman is clearly uncomfortable with the chief bringing her in, even if she gives him some new ideas. When she wants to open the body up he’s livid. “No, absolutely not. It’s her fuckin father, Ian!” But he’s overruled.

She gets nerdy talking over coffee about the case and doing math about gas emissions, but gets stuck on the irony that she would’ve shut her dad out if he’d come to her alive, yet can’t now that he’s dead. She works with Ian’s lieutenant/father (Jeffrey Donovan, WRATH OF MAN) unraveling a mystery that includes a tattoo of a religious symbol, a heavy breathing figure spying on them from the back of a van, an arson at the coroner’s office, and new leads from stuff her mom (Gretchen Corbett, PIG) never told her about her dad before.

Okay, here’s some crazy shit that happens. The coroner’s office, and presumably the bodies inside, are burnt to ash. But weeks later they find Stump’s body again, next to another dead person. I think I need to get into that SPOILERS now.

THIS IS THE SPOILER REVEAL. I had heard about this movie on podcasts, they mentioned you should go in cold, there was a big surprise. Then I forgot about that and saw a Fangoria article about the werewolf FX, with lots of pictures, and I thought, “Oh, that’s what that’s about! I need to see that.” Then heard it mentioned again with a warning to go in cold. Whoops!

But it is called THE CYCLE, and has a full moon and woods on the cover, and the corpses look very monstery, and a half hour in there’s a hallucination of a corpse with sharp teeth and then a main character eaten by an unseen, snarling beast. I feel like I would’ve at least had a guess! But it’s a novel new twist on werewolves (spoiler within a spoiler: he’s dead but his body still transforms during full moons).

Meg gets some of this information from an old man named Lou Bishop (Carl W. Crudup, THE MONKEY HU$TLE) who is horribly disfigured and hidden away by his son Danny (Phillip Andre Botello, THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE), who doesn’t believe his story about being attacked by a werewolf. So he feels pretty bad when he finds out.

The exciting thing about the movie is not any element of surprise, it’s that all this build up is paid off with the genuinely spectacular creature effects in the last act. A great transformation, excellent puppets of a drooly, long-mouthed beastie that can stand upright and run an all fours. I’m not an anti-digital guy but I like that I didn’t notice any in this. Of course, if you added up only the shots where the monster is visible it would be a short runtime, but the stuff you get is absolute top shelf, Fangoria Chainsaw Awards bait. When the very first end credit was for creature effects by Patrick Magee (ABRAHAM’S BOYS) I thought “Yep, he deserved that.”

I can imagine the version of THE CYCLE where I’m bored to tears but glad I made it to the end for the cool monster part. Maybe some will see it that way, but I found myself really pulled in from the start. I love the whole solemn mood of it, and this small group of professionals in over their heads but dealing with it diligently. I like the way the two forensic experts build a respect and camaraderie and just roll with the punches as their scientific knowledge crashes into the impossible.

I know Woll from the Daredevil show, which I’m not a fan of. But she’s really great in this. Such a specific type of science-brained person, coming to her job at the rotting corpse factory wearing a nice blouse and cardigan under her rain coat, welcoming people with sincere warmth, neither fake or ironic. They switch up the ol’ “coroner casually eating a sandwich” trope to “forensic anthropologist looking over case photos at a diner,” but she makes it real. She has all this dialogue about forensics concepts but she makes Meg seem so genuinely fascinated by the science of it and excited to explain it to people. Her enthusiasm gives her a mental escape from the horrible circumstances and uncomfortable family revelations. It’s when she’s at home not working on something that she’ll break down and cry.

Gregory is also a standout, a weathered, stringy-haired Iggy Pop type who makes sense both for a scary childhood memory and a tragic, misunderstood figure going through some shit.

It’s directed by Jordan Downey, co-writing with Kevin Stewart, who’s also the director of photography. Their previous feature is the very low budget THE HEAD HUNTER (2018), which some people I know are crazy about, and watching the trailer again it looks really cool. But at the time I don’t think I could finish it – there’s almost no dialogue and it’s about a viking in a shack fighting an off screen monster using very light-weight looking props, and I just could not suspend my disbelief at all. I always secretly grumble when I hear people raving about that movie. But this one is so good I’m tempted to go back and watch their earlier movies I wasn’t aware they were involved in – THANKSKILLING and THANKSKILLING 3. Maybe. They also made a CRITTERS fan film and a V/H/S BEYOND segment about a stork monster. Whatever the quality of those I’m genuinely shocked they could pull off a movie as serious and grown up as THE CYCLE. This is a really good one.