Berlinale 2025 review: 'The Thing With Feathers' - Benedict Cumberbatch gets Babadooked

Grief is the gutting of the soul.

Grief is love with no place to go.

Grief is a revealing force.

Grief is also the thing with feathers.

Adapted from Max Porter’s astonishing debut novella “Grief Is The Thing With Feathers”, writer and director Dylan Southern’s big screen adaptation takes this fantastical yet deeply relatable story of loss and transforms it into a one-note cinematic fable that is just about saved by one of Benedict Cumberbatch’s best performances.

The central conceit sees an unnamed father (Cumberbatch) devastated by the unexpected death of his wife. A seemingly malign presence begins to stalk him in the house he shares with his two boys (Richard and Henry Boxall) – in the form of a crow. Is the graphic artist losing his grasp on reality or is has an uninvited house guest really burrowed its way into the family’s life?

If you’re coming at The Thing With Feathers with a healthy appreciation of the source material – and if you were lucky enough to watch Cillian Murphy in the stage show – this cinematic take on Porter’s novella will frustrate more than enthral. Granted, the film sticks closely to the chapter-like sectioning (Dad, Boys, Crow and Demon), but there’s something missing here.

For those coming blind, there’s enough to admire, specifically Ben Fordesman’s horror-coded cinematography and Cumberbatch’s stellar performance. Whether he’s fighting off despair through wallowing or indulging in whiskey-fuelled dancing, Cumberbatch manages to convincingly convey the full emotional scope of a mourning father trying to hold his family together and losing the ability to communicate. The way he delivers lines like “you had an amazing mum” with his voice gently cracking is nothing short of heart-wrenching.

Sadly, Cumberbatch’s committed turn as a grieving widower is faced with on-the-nose needle drops (The Cure’s ‘In Between Days’ and the dirty blues of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins will always be welcome but are here utilised far too literally) as well as a feathered beastie which is given far too much screen time. Had the macabre depiction of grief been kept hidden a tad more, the film would have been stronger for it; by the final stretch, every time Corvus makes a cameo, you’re praying for some wing clipping.

In the stage version, Cillian Murphy played both Dad and Crow and this dédoublement worked wonders; here, the beaked Babadook may have been unavoidable as a cinematic character but it would have fared better as either a possessed doppelganger or a more eclipsed golem. David Thewlis does deliver the goods with his sinister delivery of lines like “humans are incredibly dull except in grief” and “you’re such a cliché – you’ll have the photo album out next!”. However, the anthropomorphic crow, while necessary, becomes a manifestation of grief that can’t emerge from the shadow cast by Jennifer Kent.

Add the absence of the novella’s dark humour in favour of a pummelling-into-submission tonal level which could have done with more crescendos, and any self-awareness makes grief more frustrating than terrifying.

Southern clearly understood the concept and intention, but transposing it on the big screen comes with a checklist of inevitable cinematic conventions that sadly eclipse some of the novellas’ most heartrending moments and transform something unique into a forced metaphor. His valiant effort, nobly-intentioned as it is, just isn't as profound or radical as it could – and should - have been.

Unlike grief, it’ll be easier to move beyond The Thing With Feathers.