THE CYCLE
2026Shudder · 111 MIN · 2026-10-23
THE CYCLE
2026
ROT SCORE
SYNOPSIS
Daredevil's Deborah Ann Woll plays Meg, a forensic anthropologist whose estranged dad went missing 36 years ago. Now his body has turned up at a gruesome crime scene, and she has to dig into his past to figure out why. It starts as a cold-case procedural, then turns into a full-on practical-effects creature feature. Jordan Downey (The Head Hunter) directs, and Stephen King publicly vouched for it. For fans of The Thing or The Silence of the Lambs.
SUBGENRES
Score Breakdown
GENRE SITES
| SOURCE | RAW SCORE | NORMALIZED / 100 |
|---|---|---|
| Bloody Disgusting | 3 / 5 | 60.0 |
| Dread Central | 4.5 / 5 | 90.0 |
| Daily Dead | 3 / 5 | 60.0 |
| Nightmare on Film Street | N/A | — |
| Certified Forgotten | 4 / 5 | 80.0 |
| JoBlo | N/A | — |
| GENRE SITES AVG | 72.5 | |
MAINSTREAM SOURCES
RT Critic + RT Audience are averaged together and count as 50% of this bucket. All other sources share the remaining 50% equally.
| SOURCE | RAW SCORE | NORMALIZED / 100 |
|---|---|---|
| RT Critic | 93% | 93.0 |
| RT Audience | N/A | — |
| Letterboxd | 3.31 / 5 | 66.2 |
| IMDb | 6.5 / 10 | 65.0 |
| Metacritic Critic | N/A | — |
| Metacritic User | N/A | — |
| Slash Film | 6 / 10 | 60.0 |
| IGN | N/A | — |
| The Film Stage | N/A | — |
| Collider | N/A | — |
| Roger Ebert | 3 / 4 | 75.0 |
| RT AVG (50% of bucket) | 93.0 | |
| MAINSTREAM AVG | 79.8 | |
FORMULA WEIGHTS
| SOURCE | NORMALIZED | BASE WT | ACTUAL WT | CONTRIB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Satan's Boardroom | — | 10% | — | — |
| Genre Sites | 72.5 | 50% | 55.6%* | 40.3 |
| Mainstream Sites | 79.8 | 40% | 44.4%* | 35.5 |
| Broad Excellence Bonus | — | — | — | +3.4 |
| ROT SCORE | 100.0% | 79 | ||
* Satan's Boardroom was unavailable. Weight redistributed proportionally across available sources.
Bonus awarded for strong agreement across multiple buckets.