Dylan Southern adapts the Max Porter novella, ‘Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,’ about a widowed father and the menacing giant crow that attaches itself to his sorrow.

Crow never becomes a gripping character; he's too sternly abstract, too hectoring, too much of a visual effect in search of a personality.

Played by Benedict Cumberbatch, he is an artist of sorts; some people call his work “comic books”, others call them “graphic novels”, a term he thinks is “wanky”. His output is alluded to in the film’s atmospheric credit sequence,

Benedict Cumberbatch is committed, but Dylan Southern's 'The Thing With Feathers' is simply burdened by wallowing in its characters' despair