SUNDANCE: ‘The Thing With Feathers’ Is A Vital All-Ages Grief Tale

It’s no surprise at this point that horror has become the best way to tell abstract stories of grief. Grief is a complex emotion, and the visceral nature of it all can make you feel monstrous. The Thing With Feathers is adapted from the novel “Grief is the Thing With Feathers,” by Max Porter and takes on the difficult task of balancing empathy and fear with its titular creature. Brought to the screen by writer-director Dylan Southern, The Thing With Feathers is also a passion project for its star, Benedict Cumberbatch, which he shared when he introduced the film.

The Thing With Feathers centers on a father and his two boys (none of which are given names) who have to figure out how to process and live their lives after the sudden death of the matriarch. For a young father, losing his wife is a blow that makes everything crash down around him. Having to grieve your other half while also having to grieve the parent they were and still manage to hold space for your sons while protecting them feels impossible to do. On the other side, for the boys, losing their mother is losing their entire world.

But the father can’t seem to keep himself grounded in reality. As he begins to lose his grip, numb himself with alcohol, and rely on others in his life to care for the boys, Crow begins to make their house into his home. Crow appears one day, the physical manifestation of grief. His presence isn’t just necessary but beautiful. Losing a parent and a partner cuts deep for the one left behind. How do you look after another life when you can’t get out of bed?

At the film’s start, Crow is the primary antagonist.  Crow begins to stalk them all as the family grapples with their pain, anger, sadness, and hope. When he visits the kids, he stokes their fear and anger, but he lets them get it all out, and that’s what they need.

In horror, though, we traditionally explore that grid through woman and motherhood. Most famously, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook looked at grief through the lens of motherhood and how strongly its protagonist pushes away her pain to remain a “good mother” and how it eats at her. That said, the societal pressures that affect mothers are the same as those of fathers, only through a different lens.

The Thing With Feathers takes a memory of when the ill-prepared father takes his boys out in the cold and looks after them while their mother is sick with a cold and warps it. Many people all have stories of when our father put our clothes on backward, the time he didn’t know how to fix our hair, and maybe even when he told us when mom said no. For the father in this film, that one moment of being ill-prepared haunts him as he’s left to be the only parent his boys have for the rest of their lives. The one mistake beats him down.

But that small incompetency looms large in The Thing With Feathers. It becomes a weight that causes the film’s father to question if he can ever even muster an ounce of the love and care his wife gave their children. It’s not because he can’t do it; he is just not her. Crow nestles himself into their lives, and he calls out every insecurity as he enters it. The father is nothing more than a sad man, a sad and angry man who has lost any strength.

Fatherhood is the critical lens through which we view grief in The Thing With Feathers.

Cut into four acts, we see the grieving process from the perspective of the father, the boys, Crow, and the demon that stands to take everything from them. We see Crow grow substantially in their lives and watch as the family tries to keep him at bay. Until they don’t.

The Thing With Feathers is heartbreaking to watch, but it’s also hopeful. Its importance, however, isn’t that it resonates with me. It creates an all-ages story that points to the male experience. Whether that is in a father trying to keep himself from crying so as not to break the mask of strength his boys believe he has or in the boys choosing violence and anger over openly grieving and crying with their therapist. The father can not process his emotions, and what he hands down to those boys is the same kind of deflection. He hands down the Crow.

As we wade through the family’s bereavement, it just continues to get harder. This isn’t a story we haven’t had before, but it takes time to map out the family’s mistakes and, more importantly, how they teach others to return from them. Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as the father is difficult to watch. It cuts you deeply, making you think about life and the men in your life. Learning to cry, talk, and learn that it is okay to be vulnerable remains a hurdle, and films like The Thing With Feathers wonderfully create a blueprint of the messiness of bereavement.

Cumberbatch’s performance isn’t one note. It’s vast and varied as he approaches different ways to cope, tries his best to be what his boys need, and also when he breaks. The earnest way in which he approaches his love for his sons makes his bereavement all the more gutting. Cumberbatch doesn’t play a man who is breaking and trying to hold on to all the pieces of himself and his children, too.

Bereavement isn’t easy to capture, and the physical embodiment is that much harder.

But Cumberbatch isn’t the only star. Richard and Henry Boxall, who play his sons, are equally endearing. They both grip your heart as they attempt to handle the enormity of the loss and also hold onto the only parent they have left. This is as much about losing their father as it is about them having lost their mother. When the boys meet Crow, the empathy that they receive from him also meets the fear they feel by seeing him.

Crow is astounding. The physical manifestation of grief, The Thing With Feathers, doesn’t shy away from showing him. Wonderfully tactile and the right amount of sinister, Crow is as much a dynamic character as the family he visits. David Thewlis‘ voice work and Eric Lampaert’s physical performance are absolutely pivotal to the film’s success.

Traditionally a documentary filmmaker, Dylan Southern’s approach to capturing emotion is the primary method of storytelling here. Southern’s work on letting his subjects speak their truth and chronically the impact of moments in their lives is a special kind of focus that aids him in capturing this young family’s grief.

The Thing With Feathers is an all-ages story that is vital for young audiences. Sure, adults have access to many horror stories about grief, but for children, the library is nowhere near as vast. Additionally, positive explorations of masculinity, fatherhood, and tenderness are still essential as pop culture forces the pendulum to swing back into something scarier. The Thing With Feathers is essential viewing for families, and its deft take on loss and healing never obscures the fact that sometimes, the Crow won’t move out, and that’s okay.

The Thing With Feathers premiered during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.