The Thing With Feathers

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Date Reviewed: 30/10/2025

Grief is a tricky thing. It takes empathy to touch on the subject tactfully, and experience still, to do it justice. And if you were to believe director Dylan Southern, it’s The Thing With Feathers.

Based on the book by Max Porter of a similar title, The Thing With Feathers speaks on an instinctual level, a recollection and reflection of a journey you might have already embarked on, or one you’ve yet to.

Despite the trappings of a horror film on display, make no mistake: The Thing With Feathers is a drama at full force, driven by internal and interpersonal conflict. Benedict Cumberbatch delivers one of his most restrained yet raw and touching performances in this heart-wrenching portrayal of a burdened psyche. He is elevated by his bouts of dismay and whimsy with the Crow, a Burton-esque avian creature of cynical temperament that adds just the right touch of magic realism, granting the film a feeling of being larger than life. It is undoubtedly the story’s greatest strength, toeing the line of that eldritch passenger’s involvement. Yet the film opts for a more subdued approach, where I yearned for less subtlety.

It is not a new metaphor by any means, grief as the monster we carry, manifested physically. Yet there is charm in the clichéd but unabashed. The slow, torturous, and yet benevolent recovery process that mirrors the conflict we wage within ourselves. It takes a masterfully crafted story to grant empathy not only for a familiar plight, but for one you have yet to experience. The film is conflictedly ambiguous in that regard, open to interpretation, ripe for Cumberbatch’s relationships to mirror those in your own life. Much of the cast is left nameless to that effect; Cumberbatch himself is referred to only as “Dad” or “English Widower.” One then might be left wanting more from those auxiliary characters; in the real world, after all, such people often play a greater role in healing.

The Thing With Feathers keeps it tight, both in its relationships and in its craft. A near-claustrophobic art direction by choice, and the intentful cinematography to bolster it. A lived-in yet liminal representation of a home left behind, and of those still left behind, working to pick up the pieces. This is a film that revels in its own concept, and for it, soars on crow’s wings.

Reviewed by Austien Lie