Benedict Cumberbatch’s New Movie Has a Rotten Tomatoes Score Worlds Apart From Doctor Strange
After a buzzy festival run and a headline turn from Benedict Cumberbatch, The Thing with Feathers lands on Rotten Tomatoes with a lukewarm score, as Dylan Southern’s ambitious Max Porter adaptation splits top critics — a sharp comedown from the actor’s Doctor Strange highs.
Benedict Cumberbatch shows up, the early festival chatter wasn’t bad, and on paper this one sounds prestige-y: a psychological drama from director Dylan Southern, adapting Max Porter. But The Thing with Feathers just landed with critics, and the reaction is... not great. Think polite clapping at best.
Where it stands right now
The film is sitting at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes from 53 reviews, which the site stamps as Rotten. No audience score yet. It opened in U.S. theaters on November 28, 2025.
"The Thing with Feathers manages to take flight thanks in part to Benedict Cumberbatch, but choppy characterizations and lack of subtlety make for a rough ride."
The vibe from critics
This is the part where the knives come out. Despite the buzz and Cumberbatch’s lead turn, top outlets are mostly unimpressed, especially with how the book made the jump to the screen and how the movie literalizes its more abstract ideas.
- RogerEbert.com’s Sheila O’Malley pins the problems on the adaptation choices and gives it 1.5 out of 4.
- Wendy Ide (The Observer, UK) zeroes in on the crow effect, saying the way it’s presented makes the whole thing feel clunky, overly literal, and a bit silly.
- Kevin Maher (The Times, UK) drops a 1 out of 5, calling it emotionally hollow and stuffed with fake-feeling sentiment.
- Jonathan Romney (Financial Times) says the finale goes off the rails by turning metaphor into a literal monster, like something that wandered in from Hellraiser.
- Owen Gleiberman (Variety) finds the experience heavy and, oddly, not very engaging.
- David Rooney (The Hollywood Reporter) thinks the film hammers its points way too hard.
- Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) says once the crow shows up, the whole movie starts to feel self-conscious.
- Tim Robey (The Daily Telegraph, UK) argues the filmmaking style isn’t a good match for this not-quite-horror tone.
- Nick Schager (The Daily Beast) calls it painfully literal from start to finish.
So what went wrong?
Short version: the movie tries to turn Porter's thorny, poetic ideas into images you can poke with a stick, and critics think that drains the mystery. The crow — a big thematic presence in the source — becomes a flesh-and-feather visual that multiple reviewers say looks cheap and undercuts the mood. By the finale, there’s even a demon-ish apparition that some felt belonged to a different franchise entirely. Mix in a tone that leans quasi-horror without the poetry or subtlety to back it up, and you get a lot of talk about heavy-handedness and a lack of nuance.
Bottom line
If you’re here for Cumberbatch, he’s the consistent bright spot mentioned across reviews. But between the literal-minded imagery, the adaptation choices, and the overall bluntness, The Thing with Feathers isn’t flying the way its early festival buzz suggested. Temper expectations accordingly.