Vinette Robinson Archives

Review: ‘The Thing With Feathers’ (2025), starring Benedict Cumberbatch

December 13, 2025

by Carla Hay

Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Thing With Feathers” (Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)

“The Thing With Feathers” (2025)

Directed by Dylan Southern

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in England, the dramatic film “The Thing With Feathers” (based on the novella “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An author/illustrator, who is recently widowed, struggles with raising his two pre-teen sons and finishing his most recent book, as he deals with grief and has hallucinations of an antagonistic giant crow that represents grief.

Culture Audience: “The Thing With Feathers” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Benedict Cumberbatch, the book on which the movie is based, and pretentious and repetitive movies about people dealing with the loss of loved ones.

There are plenty of dramas that have meaningful portrayals of how people cope with the deaths of loved ones. “The Thing With Feathers” is not one of these dramas. If you want to see a dull, drab, and mostly depressing movie where Benedict Cumberbatch is a widower who has verbal and physical conflicts with an 8-foot-tall crow that represents grief, then “The Thing With Feathers” is the movie for you.

Written and directed by Dylan Southern, “The Thing With Feathers” is adapted from Max Porter’s award-winning 2015 novella “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.” This book has also been made into a stage play, beginning in 2018, with the most notable version being a 2018 Irish touring production starring Cillian Murphy in the leading role of the unnamed widower and as the giant crow. “The Thing With Feathers” movie had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The movie takes place in an unnamed city in England and was actually filmed in London and in Bristol, England.

The story in “The Thing With Features” is simple to a fault: A middle-aged man, identified only in the end credits as Dad (played by Cumberbatch), is depressed over his unnamed dead wife, who got sick and suddenly died. A conversation in the movie reveals that Dad was the one who found her bleeding on a floor from a presumable fall. Throughout the movie, Dad hallucinates seeing an 8-foot-tall crow (played by Eric Lampaert, voiced by David Thewlis), which represents grief and acts like a “tough love” therapist to Dad.

Dad argues with the crow, dances with the crow, and has brawls with the crow. The crow’s often-insulting lectures are very one-note: The crow thinks Dad should snap out of the depression because the crow thinks all of Dad’s moping around is self-indulgent and unhealthy.

Dad has an obsession with crows and birds that look like crows. Throughout his home, he has illustrations and paintings of these birds. Many of these illustrations are his own, which he draws while hunched over his drawing board and scribbling these illustrations manically.

The drawings (all done in black ink) look like the types of drawings that you see in movies about disturbed people who draw monster creatures before they go on some type of killing spree. It’s later revealed that Dad is an author/illustrator of an upcoming book that he’s having trouble finishing because he’s been so consumed by grief. Appallingly, the movie makes it look like if Dad can finish this book, then he must be on the road to recovery, when his issues are so much deeper than the task of finishing a book.

“The Thing With Feathers” begins by showing Dad and his two unnamed sons at their home after the funeral of Dad’s unnamed wife (played by Claire Cartwright), who was the mother of the two sons. She is listed as Mum in the movie’s end credits. The older son, who is listed as Boy 1 (played by Richard Boxall) in the end credits, is about 7 or 8 years old. The younger son, listed as Boy 2 (played by Henry Boxall) in the end credits, is about 5 or 6 years old.

Dad tells his sons that they did an “amazing job” at the funeral. He also tells them solemnly that their mother was “the most amazing mum, boys. We must never forget that.” Later in the movie, he scolds his sons when he sees them trying on her clothes and makeup. It’s the boys’ obvious way of trying to make their mother come alive again, but Dad acts as if the boys are trying to turn into drag queens.

Apparently, this death is all Dad can think about for much of the movie, which is why the crow shows up. First, the crow lurks at night and making noises outside the window. And then later, the crow does a “home invasion” and stays for the sole purpose of making Dad uncomfortable. The visual effects for the crow are mediocre and make some parts of the movie look laughably bad.

At one point, Dad gets so depressed, he won’t get out of bed. His brother Andy (played by Tim Plester) has to check up on him to see if he’s doing okay. At a local park, Dad visits with a woman named Amanda (played by Vinette Robinson), who was a mutual friend of Dad and his wife. And all Amanda can talk about is how she thought that Dad and the dead wife were an ideal couple.

Dad takes his sons to spend the Christmas holiday with the wife’s parentse—Margaret (played by Lesley Molony) and Keith (played by Garry Cooper)—and these parents-in-law can’t stop talking about her either. Dad tells Andy that he’s annoyed when Margaret calls him to reminisce about Dad’s dead wife. Margaret describes her dead daughter as quick-witted and strong-willed. We’ll have to take her word for it because the flashbacks scenes with her are so brief and superficial, they’re not enough to show what this woman was really like.

Dad has hired a compassionate therapist named Dr. Bowden (played by Leo Bill) for his sons, but Dad clearly needs a therapist too. When Dad is in full-on crow hallucination mode and “interacting” with the crow, other people see him talking to himself and acting like there’s an imaginary being in the room that’s being difficult with him. When people in your life see you in the middle of your living room, as you punch your fists and shout at a creature that really isn’t there, it’s time to call the mental health professionals.

But that doesn’t really happen to Dad. Although Dr. Bowden appears to be a nice person, he doesn’t seem to be making much progress with the boys. Dr. Bowden gives therapy assignments to the boys and then says they don’t have to do these assignments if they don’t feel like it. All that Dr. Bowden will say to Dad, who is much more troubled than the boys, is this vague comment: “I think we should talk about the difference between grief and despair.”

“The Thing With Feathers” stumbles along with repetition and jarring narrative shifts. The movie has chapters titled “Dad,” “Crow,” “Boys” and “Demon” that show the perspectives of each of the characters who get a chapter named after them. And yes, the crow isn’t the only creature that’s haunting Dad. There’s also a demon (played by Adam Basil, voiced by Kevin Howarth), who shows up when the movie takes a bizarre turn and starts to look like a “Poltergeist” knockoff.

Cumberbatch gives a performance that can best be described as “sleepwalking,” because Dad is in such a delusional state of mind for much of the story, he isn’t fully conscious and completely emotionally present in the real world. The rest of the characters in the movie are very underdeveloped, with performances that match their mostly vague personalities. The subplot about Dad finishing the book is very muddled. And considering his serious mental health crisis, which the movie tries to make look it’s a whimsical phase and something he can handle on his own, finishing this book shouldn’t be on his list of top priorities when he can barely be a functioning human being.

Worst of all, “The Thing With Feathers” has a very irresponsible and unrealistic approach to how people can manage or overcome mental illnesses while grieving. Talking to an imaginary giant bird is not the solution, no matter how much this horrible movie tries to convince people that it is. Viewers will learn nothing about Dad except this character and how this movie ends look as phony as a male crow laying an ostrich egg.

Briarcliff Entertainment released “The Thing With Feathers” in select U.S. cinemas on November 28, 2025.

Review: ‘The Pod Generation,’ starring Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor

February 23, 2023

by Carla Hay

“The Pod Generation”

Directed by Sophie Barthes

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in New York City, in an unspecified future, the sci-fi/comedy/drama film “The Pod Generation” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: After some initial disagreements, a married couple decides to have a baby through a technological invention where an unborn child grows in a portable, egg-shaped pod until the child is born.

Culture Audience: “The Pod Generation” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, sci-fi movies that lampoon technology, and stories about expectant parents, but viewers should not expect anything particularly clever in this movie.

“The Pod Generation” is a futuristic satire about family planning that starts off very promising, but then the movie drags with repetition and fizzles out with an underwhelming ending. The talents of the cast members are squandered in this shallow film. “The Pod Generation” (which had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival) also raises many questions that the movie never bothers to answer.

Written and directed by Sophie Barthes, “The Pod Generation” takes place in an unspecified future in New York City. This future has some technology that already exists in the early 2020s, but this future has other technology that did not exist at the time this movie was made. For example, in this future shown in “The Pod Generation,” people use artificial intelligence (A.I.) programs similar to Alexa (from Amazon) and Siri (from Apple Inc.) for a variety of functions and tasks.

In “The Pod Generation,” the protagonists use a talking A.I. program called Elena for various information and duties that are similar to what a personal assistant would perform. Another talking A.I. program in the movie is called Eliza, which acts as a psychiatric therapist and counselor. Both of these A.I. programs are shown in the form of creepy-looking eyes.

Elena is a single white orb (about the size of a grapefruit) with a black pupil; the orb is attached to a small stand. Elena can also rotate while on this stand. Eliza is a two-dimensional eye that looks like a wall art that is large enough to take up an entire wall space. Eliza has a more psychedelic appearance than Elena, since Eliza’s iris/pupil area is surrounded by a pulsating kaleidoscope design.

As compelling as these A.I. programs are to look at in “The Pod Generation,” they still can’t make up for the weak narrative throughout the movie. The story centers on married couple Rachel Novy (played by Emilia Clarke) and Alvy Novy (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), who are having disagreements about how to conceive their first child together. Rachel works as some kind of office employee at a corporate company called Folio. She has a higher income than Alvy, who is a botanist and a teacher of hologram plant design. Alvy wants them to conceive a child naturally, while Rachel is more open to using the latest technology to have a child.

The movie implies that in vitro fertilization treatments are not out of the question for this couple, but Alvy is adamant that he wants Rachel to carry the unborn child in her own womb, instead of using a surrogate. “The Pod Generation” doesn’t go into details about how long Alvy and Rachel have been trying to have a child together, or even how long they’ve been married. However, the implication is that it’s long enough where it’s reached a point that Rachel (who is in her mid-30s) is growing desperate, because she feels that time is running out for her to conceive and carry a child naturally.

Alvy is about 10 years older than Rachel, although they do not discuss their age difference in the movie. “The Pod Generation” has subtle and not-so-subtle ways of showing how a male perspective and a female perspective can be different from each other, when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth. Because of menopause, women have a “biological clock” where time runs out on when they can conceive and carry a child naturally. Men have no such time pressure and can be involved in natural conception as long as they have the right sperm count for it.

“The Pod Generation” clumsily addresses these gender issues in ways that grow increasingly frustrating, not just for the couple at the center of the story but also for viewers of this movie. “The Pod Generation” does not adequately explain the legal issues involved in the new technology that Rachel and Alvy (after many arguments) decide to use to conceive and carry a child to term. The general feeling that viewers will get is that “The Pod Generation” was a screenplay written with a lot of repetitive dialogue and a “make things up as you go along” approach in crafting this futuristic world.

In the first third of the movie, Rachel and Alvy do a lot of bickering and debating about how they want to conceive a child. A company called Pegazus offers an alternative for people who can’t or don’t want to have an unborn baby growing inside a human body. Instead, Pegazus offers a portable, plastic pod in the shape of a large egg to do all the “in utero” work. It’s technology that’s available to those who can afford it—and it doesn’t come cheap, which is one of the reasons why Alvy is dead-set against this option. He doesn’t want any of his or Rachel’s money to be spent on it.

But what a coincidence: Rachel has recently found out that Folio has added this Pegazus pod program to Folio’s health insurance plan for employees. Rachel is told this information when she has a meeting with a Folio human resources executive (played by Aslin Farrell), who doesn’t have a name in the movie. This HR executive makes a lot of cringeworthy and illegal comments to Rachel during a one-and-one meeting in the HR executive’s office. This nosy HR person says a lot of inappropriate things that she probably wouldn’t say to a man. It’s obvious that “The Pod Generation” filmmakers want viewers to notice this sexism.

Rachel is told that she is being considered for a job promotion at Folio. And then the HR executive asks her what Rachel’s husband does for a living. When Rachel tells her, the unprofessional HR executive then snootily says, “So, you’re the primary source of income.” Instead of Rachel balking at this line of illegal questioning, Rachel meekly says, “Yes.”

The questions and comments get worse. The HR executive asks Rachel: “Any plans on extending the family?” Someone with more common sense and self-respect would put a stop to these illegal questions, or at least point out to this odious HR person that Rachel’s family planning is not the company’s business, and it’s illegal to ask these questions when being considered for a job, raise, or promotion.

But apparently, Rachel is too ignorant or she just doesn’t have the courage to stand up for herself and point out these facts. Instead, she stammers this answer: “I’m sure we will at one point. Not in the near, near future, but not immediately.” The HR executive then makes another heinous comment disguised as a semi-compliment: “You’re having a great, great year. It’d be a pity to lose that momentum.” (In other words, what she’s really saying is: “Forget about the promotion if you’re going on maternity leave.”)

And that’s when the HR director mentions that Folio will now cover Pegazus costs in the Folio health insurance plan: “Should you go down that route, we can even help you with the down payment. It’s our hottest perk. We just want to make sure we maintain the best and brightest women.” (In other words, what she’s really saying is: “We don’t want to be reminded that women who get pregnant and give birth have the right to maternity leave, because we think women who take maternity leave are less productive than women who don’t take maternity leave.”)

It’s not spoiler information to say that Rachel eventually convinces Alvy to use the Pegazus way of pregnancy. Alvy and Rachel have the popular option to choose the gender of the child in advance, but they choose not to take that option. Rachel and Alvy also decide not to find out the child’s gender until the child is born. Their unborn baby gestates in a pod that provides all of the fetus’ needs in the same way as if the baby were growing inside a human womb. Just like a human womb, the pod can be part of ultrasound screenings, while the fetus inside can hear any sounds that are nearby. The pod is not supposed to be opened until the time of childbirth.

All of the computer technology connected to each pod is at the Pegazus womb center, which is essentially a pod control center. The pod can be left at the womb center, or the parent(s) of the unborn child can take the pod to pre-approved locations. It’s mentioned that a pod can be autonomous from the womb center for a maximum of 48 hours, in case the person with the pod needs to travel.

Rachel and Alvy attend orientation and counseling sessions with other couples and mothers who are using Pegazus pregnancy pods, but the movie doesn’t present the other people in these sessions as anything but anonymous extras. It’s a huge missed opportunity for more character development. In fact, almost everyone in contact with Rachel and Alvy are anonymous and generic, with a few exceptions.

Rachel has a talkative co-worker friend named Alice (played by Vinette Robinson), who had a Pegazus pod pregnancy with her husband Josh (played by Benedict Landsbert-Noon), who is the passive one in their marriage. Alice had the most influence on Rachel wanting to have a Pegazus pod pregnancy, because Alice is constantly raving about the experience. The Pegazus pre-natal orientation and counseling sessions are led by the Pegazus womb center director Linda Wozcheck (played by Rosalie Craig), who is a perky control freak.

The founder of Pegazus (played by Jean-Marc Barr) is one of many characters in “The Pod Generation” without a name in the movie. He is shown doing a TV or video interview, where he gives off a vibe of being like a combination of a cult leader and a smarmy salesperson. He’s a smooth talker who looks like he’s accustomed to convincing a lot of people to do what he wants them to do.

He says to the interviewer (played by Troy Scully) about Pegazus’ intentions: “At Pegazus, we want fulfilled mothers. We want them to pursue their careers and dreams. Let us do the heavy lifting while you enjoy your babies. We are highly scientific. We use intuition and heart where needed.”

Of course, anyone who’s seen enough of these sci-fi cautionary tale movies will notice that this mysterious Pegazus founder used the phrase “where needed” when talking about intuition and heart. Who gets to make that decision? Rachel and Alvy are supposedly educated professionals, but they never ask a lot of basic questions that people with any common sense would ask before they signed away the pre-natal caregiving rights for their unborn child to Pegazus. And that’s why watching “The Pod Generation” becomes increasingly irritating as it goes along.

This disappointing movie goes into superficial soap opera territory when Rachel doesn’t bond with the fetus in the pod as much as she thought she would, while Alvy bonds with the fetus in the pod more than he thought he would. Rachel starts to get the feeling that the unborn child likes Alvy more than the child likes Rachel. And she’s jealous about it, which leads to more arguments between Rachel and Alvy, as well as more relationship therapy sessions with A.I. program Eliza. (Alvy never completely trusts Eliza, because she is not a human being.)

Meanwhile, Rachel sometimes attaches the pod to her stomach to make it look like a real pregnancy underneath her clothes. It leads to brief moments of her feeling connected to this pregnancy. But then, Rachel gets a harsh lesson in pregnancy body shaming when she brings the pod to her office job. She gets weird looks from co-workers during a conference room meeting when she proudly brings the pod to the meeting.

After the meeting, Alice discreetly advises Rachel (when they’re alone together in an office room) to leave the pod in the employee break room where other expectant parents are keeping their pods. Alice also suggests that from now on, Rachel should leave the pod at the Pegazus womb center until the baby is born. Rachel hates the idea because she wants to spend as much time as possible with the pod. “You don’t want to be labeled ‘the distracted mom,'” Alice warns Rachel about how their co-workers might think of Rachel.

For a movie that has a lot to say about sexism against women (especially when it comes to pregnancy and family planning), none of the characters in “The Pod Generation” gives any pushback or stands up to this sexism. This lack of resistance to sexism from anyone in “The Pod Generation” looks as fake and hollow as one of the movie’s empty pods. Perhaps writer/director Barthes wanted to make some commentary about how this supposedly “progressive” tech-oriented society of “The Pod Generation” is actually socially backwards when it comes to treatment of women and complacent in how technology has taken over their lives.

However, it isn’t the technology that is sexist. The human beings are the ones being sexist, with their cutting remarks and attitudes that aren’t controlled by technology. If “The Pod Generation” is supposed to be a commentary about women losing control of their pregnancies to technology, the movie doesn’t really prove that point either, because Rachel is given access to the pod for most of the movie. “The Pod Generation” never shows the pregnancy journey of any other women except Rachel.

The middle of “The Pod Generation” is a boring rehash of Rachel and Alvy’s marital problems. You don’t need to be a couple’s therapist to see that this pregnancy is not going to solve these problems. And “The Pod Generation” fails to convince viewers why Rachel and Alvy (who aren’t very compatible) fell in love in the first place. Clarke and Ejiofor are perfectly fine in delivering their lines of dialogue, but they don’t have believable chemistry with each other as people who are supposed to be spouses.

Perhaps the biggest letdown of “The Pod Generation” is that it’s a “bait and switch” movie. The movie keeps dropping hints—the sexism, the increasingly controlling ways of Pegazus, the intrusive assumptions of the A.I. technology—that it’s all leading to something very big and very sinister. There is a suspenseful sequence toward the end of the film, but it’s misleading, if you take into consideration how the movie ends. And for a movie that the filmmakers have labeled a “comedy,” there isn’t really anything amusing (not even in a darkly comedic way) about “The Pod Generation.” The movie comes across as technically competent, but soulless—much like the A.I. technology that “The Pod Generation” is aiming to spoof.

UPDATE: Roadside Attractions and Vertical will release “The Pod Generation” in select U.S. cinemas on August 11, 2023.