The Cycle Review | Fantastic Fest 2026
FANTASTIC FEST 2026 REVIEW
‘The Cycle’ Review: Deborah Ann Woll Anchors One of Fantastic Fest 2026’s Best Genre Mysteries
There is something rewarding about watching a filmmaker take the next step.
When you’ve followed someone’s work, appreciated what they’ve done before and then start seeing names like Deborah Ann Woll and Jeffrey Donovan attached to the next project, expectations naturally rise. At some point, you’re no longer simply watching a promising filmmaker. You’re watching someone begin to operate on a larger canvas.
With The Cycle, Jordan Downey appears to have reached that point.
Making its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026, The Cycle begins with the framework of a forensic procedural before steadily transforming into a crime thriller, a mystery and, eventually, something considerably darker. What makes that progression work is Downey’s patience. Instead of immediately revealing everything the movie has hiding underneath its surface, he allows the investigation and characters to pull us deeper.
Deborah Ann Woll plays Meg, a forensic expert whose ability to examine the dead extends beyond simply being good at her job. Childhood trauma has shaped the direction of her life, helping turn her into someone remarkably structured professionally while leaving parts of her emotionally disconnected elsewhere.
She has developed an ability to notice details in the dead that others might overlook.
There is something inherently fascinating about a person choosing to spend their life examining bodies and searching for the final pieces of stories that can no longer be told by the people who lived them. The Cycle understands that relationship and uses Meg’s profession as more than a convenient mechanism for solving a mystery.
Her connection to death means something.
When a significant case reaches her table, that connection becomes considerably more personal than she would like.
That’s where discussing The Cycle becomes difficult without diminishing the experience.
This is a movie built around discovery, and the less audiences know about where Meg’s investigation eventually takes her, the better.
Will Hochman plays Ian, while Jeffrey Donovan enters the story as Sheriff Marks, contributing to a family dynamic that becomes increasingly important as the mystery develops. There is something immediately interesting about the relationships surrounding the investigation, particularly as professional obligations begin colliding with personal history.
Downey keeps tightening those connections.
As Meg gets closer to understanding what is happening, the questions become more uncomfortable and the violence considerably more vicious. What initially feels like a grounded procedural gradually reveals the genre movie underneath it.
And when The Cycle decides to become a horror movie, it doesn’t hesitate.
There were moments during the Fantastic Fest screening that generated exactly the kind of spontaneous applause genre filmmakers hope to hear from an audience. Not because the movie is simply chasing shock value, but because Downey understands how to construct a payoff and then give horror fans the release they’ve been waiting for.
That’s an important distinction.
Plenty of films can deliver violence. Far fewer build enough tension around it that the violence actually feels rewarding when it arrives.
What impressed me most, however, is how Downey approaches material that carries considerable history within horror and thriller cinema.
Without revealing exactly what that means, The Cycle eventually steps into territory that genre audiences will recognize immediately. The risk in doing that is familiarity. Once you’re working with imagery, ideas or traditions that have become iconic within horror, audiences arrive with decades of expectations already attached.
Downey doesn’t simply reproduce what came before.
He finds his own way into it.
That allows The Cycle to acknowledge a recognizable genre lineage while still developing an identity separate from the movies that helped establish it. There is respect for what came before without the film becoming trapped by nostalgia.
Woll is essential to making that work.
Meg needs to function simultaneously as investigator, damaged daughter and emotional entry point into an increasingly disturbing mystery. Woll gives her the restraint necessary for the procedural material while gradually revealing the vulnerabilities underneath that professional control.
Her performance also helps The Cycle maintain an accessibility that could extend beyond dedicated horror audiences.
For a significant portion of its runtime, this works as a compelling crime mystery on its own. Someone who doesn’t regularly watch horror could become invested through Meg, the investigation and the family dynamics before realizing exactly how far Downey intends to take them.
Whether those viewers remain quite as comfortable once the horror fully arrives is another question.
Genre fans should have considerably less trouble.
Downey has already demonstrated an ability to operate inside unconventional genre spaces, and conversations surrounding his previous work made his passion for filmmaking and the ideas he wanted to pursue obvious. The Cycle feels like the maturation of that potential.
Everything is operating at a higher level here.
The cast is stronger. The mystery is more controlled. The emotional material carries greater weight. And when the film needs to become vicious, Downey doesn’t lose the discipline that made the earlier procedural elements effective.
Most importantly, the different pieces feel like they belong to the same movie.
Family, loyalty, trauma and murder gradually become intertwined until separating the investigation from Meg’s personal history becomes increasingly difficult. What initially appears to be another case becomes something capable of forcing her to confront connections she’d rather leave buried.
Fantastic Fest exists for discoveries like this.
The Cycle isn’t simply one of the stronger films I’ve seen at the festival so far. It is one of my favorite genre films of the year.
There is an audience for this beyond the festival circuit, and hopefully it doesn’t take long for that audience to get an opportunity to discover what Downey, Woll and the rest of the cast have constructed.
For those who do, go in knowing as little as possible.
The mystery deserves that.
Jordan Downey had already given plenty of reasons to expect something good from The Cycle.
What he delivered is considerably better.
4.5 out of 5
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