‘The Thing With Feathers’ proves that sometimes metaphors get in the way of the story

I gave it a 3/5. Benedict Cumberbatch is genuinely great—he plays the "exhausted, grieving father" perfectly. The cinematography is also beautiful, capturing a very bleak, shadowy London.

But the movie leans so hard into the magic realism/horror elements of the "Crow" (David Thewlis) that it forgets the human drama. It felt like the screenplay was using the Crow to spoon-feed emotion to the audience, rather than letting us watch the father and sons actually interact and heal.

It raises the old debate about adaptations: does sticking to the book's heavy metaphors work on screen? In this case, I felt it killed the emotional momentum.

Has anyone else seen it? Did the magic realism work for you, or did you find it distracting?

Full review here: https://amnesicreviews.substack.com/p/the-thing-with-feathers-drowning