The Secret Lives of the Dead: The Cycle (2026)

“My job is about understanding someone’s life in reverse.”

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The problem with a lot of classic horror tropes is that they’ve become too familiar. Take, for example, the endless dissection of the “rules” of slasher films that begins at least as far back as Scream in 1996. But lest we lay the blame entirely on Kevin Williamson, Scream was far from the first place to begin rendering horror down into formula.

In an interview, disgraced Dark Horse editor Scott Allie, who left the company amid allegations of sexual misconduct, once said that “the Universal monster films, which were great for the most part, popularized, for the sake of plot expedience, the idea that monsters could be dispensed with through simple mechanics. Obviously those means, the stake, the silver cane, etc., came from legend, but they were emphasized in the films, and treated as sort of rules.”

So, how do you tell a familiar story in a new way while also engaging with established lore? One approach is to come at it like a forensic pathologist. Take one little fragment – one piece that doesn’t belong – and use it to work backward until you can reconstruct an entire corpus. Doing so, however, requires patience and restraint, and a faith in your audience that is sadly rare in many movies today.

When I watched the trailer for The Cycle, the first thing I thought of was Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) – a comparison borne out in the film itself. In both movies, an inscrutable and seemingly inert corpse turns up at the scene of a gruesome crime, and proves to not only be the crux of an unraveling mystery, but the source of a potentially supernatural threat.

The real nature of that threat is something that The Cycle keeps close to its vest until the halfway mark, and yet it defines everything that happens in the movie, both before and after, making discussion of the film without spoilers a particularly difficult proposition, yet I will do my utmost to preserve any mystery here.

The Cycle begins as a moody police procedural before transforming into something more visceral, while still keeping an admirable dedication to gruesome and painful-looking practical effects. The turn itself is probably pretty predictable to horror fans. I had correctly guessed it from the trailer and, even if I hadn’t, the name of one of the characters would have given the game away, at least for me.

Seeing something coming doesn’t necessarily decrease the dread of its approach, however – ask anyone who has ever stood on the tracks while a train was drawing near – and The Cycle is at its best in the first half, as the threads are all still gradually being drawn tight. Once the reveal happens and the pace picks up, we’re in more familiar territory, even if there are still some nice touches on the way.

We often tend to discuss movies like this as if they hinge on their “twist.” Even my tiptoeing around spoilers in this review helps to reinforce the notion that knowing too much will somehow ruin the experience. I don’t think that’s actually true in this case. As I said, I had predicted the reveal before I ever even pushed play, and never once doubted my assumptions. While I’m avoiding spoilers in this review, the pleasure here is not really in the destination, but in the journey that the movie takes to get there – and while I knew more or less where we were going to end up, the journey provided plenty of twists and turns on the way.

Even knowing what the reveal is going to be doesn’t really detract from the pleasure of watching the mystery unfold, because the film takes such an unlikely and roundabout approach to its subject matter. At the heart of The Cycle is a very familiar type of story, but the telling comes at it from obtuse angles that make it feel new, and the central conceit is an ingenious and haunting extrapolation of existing lore.

Where many horror movies feel mired in the expectations of their chosen form, like the best retellings, The Cycle is freed by them, using them as building blocks to create something bolder than it could without them.

There will be much more interesting essays to be written about The Cycle once we can more openly engage with its ideas, but, at the time of this writing, it hasn’t even technically been released yet – it drops on Shudder October 23.

So, for the time being, The Cycle is a restrained, clever, sometimes poignant horror film that Stephen King called “The Thing meets The Silence of the Lambs,” and it’s well worth your time. Go into it cold – or don’t – but meet it where it is, and let its patient reconstruction of familiar story beats tell an old tale in a wonderfully new way.