The Thing with Feathers

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives a strong and powerful performance throughout this movie, but unfortunately, it's repetitive narrative that explores of themes of grief with many blended elements of different themes, messy direction, and uneven structure becomes more of an exhausting experience rather an emotional experience.

Director Dylan Southern tries to do justice with the original source material that it is based on. Despite it's impactful performance and ambitious approach, Southern struggles with the narrative as many of the themes are repetitive, and it doesn't do really get into the characters very well. Almost as if chooses the Hollywood cliches of how grief is explored and how it is handled.

It's disappointing because I really like the book. But I feel as if the movie doesn't do justice to the material.