Benedict Cumberbatch Can't Save This Heavy-Handed Grief Drama From Losing Its Way
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Dylan Southern's feature debut, The Thing With Feathers, tackles grief with admirable seriousness, but its impact is often lost in a muddle of loud jump scares and heavy-handed metaphors. Based on Max Porter's novella Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, the film follows a grieving widower (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he struggles to care for his two young sons in the aftermath of his wife's death. While Cumberbatch delivers a ferociously committed performance, capturing the disorientation and desperation of sudden loss, the film's central metaphor – a towering, grotesque crow that invades the family's home – quickly becomes suffocating. The crow's constant taunting and violence feel repetitive and blunt, rather than revelatory, and the film's reliance on loud musical cues and jump scares blunts its emotional impact. Despite capable performances from the two sons, they are thinly sketched, and the absent wife remains frustratingly undefined, reducing what could have been an intimate loss to an abstract idea. The film wavers between being too blunt for a psychological drama and too restrained to be effective horror. While the film's heart is in the right place, its heavy-handed approach keeps viewers at a distance, rather than inviting reflection. Cumberbatch's performance alone makes it worth engaging with, but ultimately, the film struggles to make viewers feel what it wants them to understand. With its ambition and seriousness, The Thing With Feathers had the potential to be a powerful exploration of grief, but it often feels like it's shouting its meaning rather than inviting empathy.
