‘The Thing With Feathers’ Review: Benedict Cumberbatch Fights His Dark Side In A Powerful Portrayal Of Grief – Sundance Film Festival

deadline.com:

Crows rustle in Dylan Southern’s fiction feature debut, the haunting story of a middle-aged man coming to terms with the sudden and unexpected death of his wife, the mother of his two boys.

In terms of genre, it’s hard to place, sitting somewhere between social drama and heightened horror; if Ken Loach dreamed up The Babadook, it might look something like this.

Southern—previously known for such heady, experiential and you-are-there music docs as Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012) and Meet Me in the Bathroom (2022)—brings the visceral immediacy of those films to a very raw and emotional subject matter.

For all the artistry behind it, however, The Thing with Feathers will likely prove divisive; for survivors of trauma, it will likely be cathartic, but for others more fortunate, its pitch-perfect portrayal of loss might be a touch too uncomfortable.