Briarcliff Entertainment has unveiled the official trailer for The Thing With Feathers, a haunting grief drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a grieving father. Adapted from Max Porter’s acclaimed book Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, the film tells the raw and surreal story of a recently widowed dad struggling to raise his two young sons while confronting a mysterious presence in their home.
The trailer teases an unsettling mix of emotional devastation and dark, fantastical horror. While grief itself is overwhelming, in this story it manifests as Crow—an unhinged, nightmarish houseguest who invades their lives with both menace and strange guidance. Designed by renowned creature artist Conor O'Sullivan, Crow is shown only in fragments in the trailer, fueling curiosity about how this shadowy figure will come alive on-screen.
Cumberbatch leads the cast alongside Vinette Robinson, David Thewlis, and Eric Lampaert as the sinister Crow. Directed by Dylan Southern, known for incisive music documentaries such as Shut Up & Play the Hits and Meet Me in the Bathroom, the film marks his narrative feature debut. Reviews from Sundance 2025 were mixed to negative, but the trailer’s striking cut—compared by some to being “better than the film”—has stirred new intrigue as the project heads into wider festival play at London and Sitges.
Produced by Andrea Cornwell, Adam Ackland, and Leah Clarke, The Thing With Feathers is being positioned as both an intimate gut punch of a family drama and a gothic-tinged experiment in the visualization of grief. Following screenings at Sundance and Berlin earlier this year, the film will open in select U.S. theaters on November 28th, 2025, just in time for awards season conversations.
Check Out The Trailer:-