The Cycle, or, Month of the Dead

The Cycle is a 2026 horror movie running on the Shudder channel, starring Deborah Ann Woll as a forensic scientist with an exceptional skill at deducing what happened to a dead body from a minimum of information. Jeffrey Donovan and Will Hochman play cops who ask for her help investigating a strange case: the body of a dead man was found near the bodies of two other people torn apart by some sort of animal, but all signs say that the man had been dead for much longer. And get this twist: that man is her biological father, who left the family when she was four years old! For a lot of the runtime of The Cycle, it plays like a modern police procedural, albeit more of a basic cable than Prestige TV production. Everything is polished and grim and atmospheric, and the performances are genuinely good, but it’s just a little bit off. For instance, every character has a Key Point Of Backstory That Defines Them, and they are all primed to deliver it in a monologue at the drop of a hat. The…