Death Cycle is a horror film from 2025. In some aspects I guess you could call it a slasher, but mainly because the antagonist is masked and that the murders are quite gruesome. To me, it ends up being more of a revenge movie. Revenge against a family where one of the members caused death in a hit and run incident. I say Incident because it’s a little bit more than just a hit and run. It goes more with lines on what you do if you hit an animal with the car. You euthanize the animal. It’s different when it’s a human and when it’s not even necessary.
At first I thought that the cycle in Death Cycle referred to the motorcycle, but then it hit me that cycle might actually be hinting at the cycle of life and death. I’m probably overthinking it. But it is an interesting wordplay, intentional or not. You will understand when you see the film, I think.
Death Cycle as a film though, it might almost be interpreted as a dual experience. There is the present and what happens in that timeline. But when we witness the murders we actually see them in past tense. They’re shown in such a way that they’re illustrating what’s being addressed in the dialogue. Like someone asks what really happened and then we get a mix of the answer verbally and gradually transferred to see the actual event.
This has to be kind of meta though, since the person talking about it didn’t actually witness the events themselves, it becomes hearsay of sorts. But we get to see the actual events. Either it’s a way of messing with our mind or the viewer isn’t supposed to think in those terms. I tend to go way and beyond with my thoughts when it comes to these things.
Right away I had an idea how it was going to play out too. And up to the very end I felt disappointed that I figured it out in the first 15 minutes or so. And I was kind of right too. But it was time to really uncover the killer and how it was all held together. There were a couple of twists. I was still basically right, but those story turns really took me by surprise and I’m very impressed by that.
I think there’s a great presence in Death Cycle. It’s not just a killer film, one murder after another without reason and underlying logic. This movie makes its audience think. Probably because of the presence and nerve it contains. I’m never bored with it as I so easily am nowadays. It’s interesting all the way though. It might have something to do with the fact that it’s just about 80 minutes long. Everything not vital to the story is not there to just make the film longer, which is good. It becomes tighter and more entertaining.
There is also a little moral discussion going on. Who’s the real monster, the family who tried to cover up the accident that started it all? Or the brutal killer? I was on both sides of the fence on this one, depending where in the storyline we’re talking about. I don’t think the average viewer will do an inner debate as much as me though and you don’t have to. It’s really enough to watch Death Cycle for the surface, the brutal killings and the intense suspense involved. Strange thing, it’s suspenseful even if you think you know how it all sticks together, strange indeed.
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