The Thing with Feathers (2025)

★ 6.4 1h 39m 35 votes IMDb
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After a tragic loss, a grieving father tries to raise his young sons whilst dealing with an unlikely, unpredictable, and uninvited houseguest.

The Thing with Feathers

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Cast

Benedict Cumberbatch
Benedict Cumberbatch as Dad Age 49 · Hammersmith, London, England, UK Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born July 19, 1976) is an English actor. Known for his roles on the screen and stage, he has received various accolades throughout his career, including a Primeti...
David Thewlis
David Thewlis as Crow (voice) Age 63 · Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK David Wheeler (born March 20, 1963), better known as David Thewlis, is an English actor and filmmaker. He is known as a character actor and has appeared in a wide variety of genres in both film and te...
Sam Spruell
Sam Spruell as Paul Age 49 · Southwark, London, England, UK From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Sam Spruell is a British actor. His film credits include Defiance (2008), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), London to Brighton (2006), To Kill a King (2003) and...
Vinette Robinson
Vinette Robinson as Amanda Age 45 · Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, UK Vinette Robinson is an English actress. Her TV roles include Sherlock, Black Mirror and Doctor Who as civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks in Series 11..
Leo Bill
Leo Bill as Dr. Bowden Age 45 · Warwickshire, England, UK Leo Martin Bill is an English actor, best known for his role as James Brocklebank in the 2006 film The Living and the Dead, as well as The Fall, Alice in Wonderland, and the FX/BBC One drama series Ta...
Garry Cooper
Garry Cooper as Keith Age 70 · Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK Hull born Garry Cooper is an actor who came to fame playing Peter, the flash boyfriend of Leslie Ash and rival to Phil Daniels' wannabe mod in cult 1979 hit Quadrophenia. Other film credits include M...

Audience Reviews

CinemaSerf 7/10 Nov 26, 2025
Whilst we don’t know exactly what happened, we quickly discover that a father (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his two young sons (Henry & Richard Boxall) are recovering from the fairly traumatic death of their wife/mother. Dad is trying to put as brave a face as he can on daily life as he tries to keep the kids motivated at home and at school and whilst he continues his work as an animator for a darker, more adult, market. Things start to take quite an ominous tone at his increasingly disordered home, when he begins to hear things, to see things - and a crow he has been drawing seems central to those visions. For us watching, it is pretty clear what the purpose of this bird - in it’s more erect and cruelly verbal manifestation - actually is, but of course he is completely oblivious as the film splits into chapters for dad, the sons and even the bird itself as we explore the concept and profound impact of grief. The two Boxall lads deliver their part really quite engagingly, but it’s really the tour de force from Cumberbatch that makes this worth the watch. His character is struggling to come to terms with his loss, and though certainly not neglectful of his family his attempts to compartmentalise his feelings, to shield the boys from the excesses of his desperate emotional state and, for that matter, to immerse himself in a world of professional escapism fuelled by Scotch are really quite powerfully delivered by an actor who genuinely comes across as a man completely lost. The representations of the feathered spectre introduce quite a degree of psychological menace, even violence, and these also contribute to the general sense of exasperation that this man, and to an extent his sons, experience as they are just old enough to be cognisant of the disaster that has hit them all, but not of it’s longer term ramifications. The soundtrack also adds an effective element of melancholy and frenzy at times, and I was frankly quite surprised at my own level of investment in this family’s predicament as this moved on. Maybe not a film to watch if you are a recent survivor of the grieving process, but otherwise it takes a different slant on the topic, and is worth a look.

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