The Cycle (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)
THE CYCLE (2026)
Starring Deborah Ann Woll, Jeffrey Donovan, Gretchen Corbett, Will Hochman, Phillip Andre Botello, Dana Millican, Don Keith Opper, Jack Doolan, Trevor Newlin, Danika Golombek, Carl W. Crudup, Jeb Berrier and David Myers Gregory.
Screenplay by Jordan Downey and Kevin Stewart.
Directed by Jordan Downey.
Distributed by Shudder. 111 minutes. Not Rated.
Screened at the 2026 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Not everything you see at a film festival is art, and here’s your proof. The Cycle is a cheesy, not very good, made-for-streaming horror film which devolves from a moderately intriguing serial killer procedural to an absolutely ridiculous creature feature. I won’t say exactly which classic monster it turns out to be because that isn’t revealed until the last half hour or so, but the title may give you a hint. Particularly if you are a Stephen King fan.
It stars three familiar TV faces – Deborah Ann Woll (of Daredevil), Jeffrey Donovan (of Burn Notice) and a supporting role by the much-missed Gretchen Corbett (of The Rockford Files) – all of whom do their best with the material but deserve better.
As with most horror films in the modern day, The Cycle has a dirty, jagged visual style with lots of quick disorienting cuts, muddy lighting, askew camera angles, grimy visuals and sudden harsh blasts of feedback.
Dr. Megan Garland (Woll) is a superstar forensic scientist (who knew there were superstar forensic scientists?) who is asked to investigate three bodies which were found on a nearby property. Two of the bodies were a mother and her young daughter who were pretty much mutilated. Also found nearby was a mummified corpse that had apparently been dead for years.
This corpse was the reason which Dr. Garland (call me Meg, she insists to everyone she meets) was contacted. He was her father, who abandoned Meg and her mother (Corbett) when she was just eight years old.
At first, Meg wanted nothing to do with the man who left her and her mother high and dry all those decades ago. However, she eventually agrees to help the local sheriff Ian Marks (Will Hochman) and his deputy (Jeffrey Donovan), who just happens to be the sheriff’s father. As the bodies start to pile up and the corpse disappears and reappears, they start to wonder if maybe there are supernatural forces at work.
Again, without going into details about what kind of monster it is – which may be overprotecting against spoilers, because really what could spoil this movie? – I do have to say that The Cycle makes at least one huge leap from the traditional lore of its particular creature. A change so big that genre fans will probably raise an eyebrow.
Let’s just say that in The Cycle, death is not the end of the transformation… which is a pretty significant departure from decades of lore. I suppose most modern monster films do play with the traditions of their monsters, but still I found this particular one really hard to believe.
The Cycle is one of those horror movies where the more you learn, the more ridiculous it gets. By the time we hit the extended showdown at the farm between monster and forensic scientist, the audience is just shaking its head in dumbfounded amazement. (And not in a good way.)
To give you an idea of how bored I was by the climactic battle, oddly enough, there are two appearances of a 1970s pop song played by the ultimate victim/villain on CD. Listening to it, it sounded pretty familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. So, I sat through all the credits to get to the music listings, and it turns out I did vaguely know it. It was “Silver Lady,” actor David Soul’s not-quite-a-hit follow-up single (it peaked at 52 on the Billboard charts) to his 1976 number one smash hit “Don’t Give Up on Us.”
It also made me wonder – was David Soul’s album ever released on CD? (It turns out the 1977 album Playing to an Audience of One has had limited release over the years, and is available on the late Soul’s website, but I find it hard to believe that this character, who may or may not have been dead for decades, is browsing and shopping on the internet.) And for the record, “Silver Lady” was a fine song, but I used to love “Don’t Give Up On Us” when I was growing up. They should have used that instead.
Not that that little factoid has much of substance to say about The Cycle, but just the fact that this little trivia nugget turned out to be the most intriguing part of the movie is probably not a good sign, is it?
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 19, 2026.
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