19/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Benedict Cumberbatch carries newcomer British director Dylan Southern’s stylistically distinct but narratively uneven psychological drama

British writer-director Dylan Southern has picked one of the most celebrated novels of modern English literature, Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, to adapt for his first feature, The Thing with Feathers, a psychological drama with elements of fantasy and horror, which has just had its European premiere at the Berlinale, as a Berlinale Special screening. It showcases Southern as a talent to watch, with a distinct approach and style that we can expect to grow more clearly defined and firmer in the future, but said style doesn’t always work tonally or narratively.

Lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s star power will probably attract audiences, and it is his performance that anchors the often-uneven film. He plays a character simply called Dad, and the picture opens right after the funeral of his wife. It is a dark and solemn beginning, as the haggard Dad asks his two seven- or eight-year-old sons, named Boys (twins Henry and Richard Boxall) if they are hungry. The kids seem shellshocked, but not nearly as lost as their father. In fact, Southern really focuses on Dad and his refusal to accept the loss.

The film is divided into chapters that tell us whose angle we are watching the proceedings unfold from, and one of these is dedicated to the Boys, with one of them serving as a narrator, but this is its weakest and least concrete part. The much more present character is the apparent antagonist Crow. Dad is a comic-book writer, and this creature rises out of the pages of his drawings and becomes a very present, very physical representation of grief – which is hardly a spoiler, given the title of the source material.

Played by David Thewlis, Crow is a large, anthropomorphic bird with hands that end in talons. We rarely get to see its wings, which, despite the intense physicality of the practical effects, make it look a bit silly at certain moments. At the beginning of the feature, the director uses subtle but obvious horror tropes to set the tone, so we first perceive Crow as a lethal threat. As Dad increasingly gets lost in his despair, it grows from a disembodied voice taunting him for his self-pity, calling him “Sad-Dad” or “English Widower”, to a visceral and aggressive presence.

DoP Ben Fordesman, who worked wonders on Rose Glass’s Saint Maud [+see also:
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Cumberbatch is at his most dedicated in a truly demanding role, and in the film’s creepiest moments, which feel underused, he himself gradually takes on the attributes of a crow, unconsciously cawing as he clumsily tries to prepare breakfast or contorting his arm behind his back like a wing. As he tells his therapist, he relied on his wife for everything, so his refusal to give in to grief is psychologically sound. Its physical manifestations, however, are not that consistent, especially with the introduction of another otherworldly character that takes the film deeper into horror territory. This feels poorly prepared and sudden, though, leaving us to wonder what narrative purpose it really serves.

The Thing with Feathers was co-produced by the UK’s Lobo Films and SunnyMarch, with mk2 handling the international rights.