Interview With Jordan Downey, Writer/Director Of ‘The Cycle’

Something I did not expect this year was for the writer and director of Thankskilling to make one of my favorite movies of 2026. Jordan Downey’s The Cycle is a fresh new horror film that just premiered on Shudder this weekend and it’s so fucking good I watched my screener twice in one day. I don’t usually do that. I’m going to say as little about this movie as I can because I want to avoid spoilers. This one is definitely one you want to go into blind.

To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Jordan about how the film came about, working with practical effects, and more!

PopHorror: I loved The Cycle so much that I watched it twice yesterday.

Jordan Downey: Wow!

PopHorror: I watched it by myself and then I made my partner watch it with me. I must say, you’ve come a long since Thankskilling, which I also love.

Jordan Downey: For different reasons, hopefully.

PopHorror: Yes! You wrote The Cycle with Kevin Stewart, who is also the cinematographer. What inspired the movie and drove you to bring the story to life?

Jordan Downey: The initial hook, the spoiler alert hook in the movie, was the initial concept we had. We were working on a pitch for a TV series version of The Head Hunter, which is the film we made before this, and then we had this idea, and one day while just working on it accidentally. We weren’t trying to come up with something in this specific subgenre, and when we had that idea, we were like, why has no one done that before? That’s pretty cool. We’ve seen so many horror movies and I thought for sure there would have been something out there, some random part five of some franchise that we missed. And we couldn’t find anything out there so we were like, okay, I think that’s worth us pursuing, and the idea just consumed our lives at that point. We thought that it would be really cool to take a police procedural – we were watching The Outsider at the time and True Detective, and I was always a big fan of The X-Files, and I love a good murder mystery and David Fincher’s films and all that – and I thought it would be really cool to see something like that. We hadn’t seen that in a while, but how do you make that something that then backs into a folkloric thing that you’re not really expecting? It’s just an idea that just grabbed us and we said, “Okay, this is our next movie! No matter what, let’s just put everything we have into making this.” It’s been six years.

PopHorror: I went in completely blind and then I watched the trailer after, which I’m glad I did not watch before because I was not expecting it. I watched it with my partner and she was like, “Is this happening, or is this happening?” I’m like, “He’s a killer turkey! Stop asking me what’s going on!”

Jordan Downey: Yeah!

PopHorror: I was having a hard time coming up with questions for today that didn’t give it away, but we have to touch on the practical effects, which are fantastic. I was so excited to see to that. What was it important to you to use practical effects instead of digital CGI?

Jordan Downey: I just prefer that in general. I think it’s better. There’s a place for CGI; there’s certain things you cannot do practically. But for something like this, that’s a horror film that at times is a throwback to the 80s movies that I grew up loving and the practical effects of that era, the tactile drippy, icky look of those physical things that are interacting with the actors, there’s nothing like it. I like the accidents that come from practical effects. If you’re doing a digital creature or whatever the gag is really, you’re going to try to perfect it and in this case, you get little errors and you get to discover things on set. It’s less likely you’re going to have a discovery process in aftereffects as you are on set when there’s 15 people around you, you can move the camera, and you can shift the lights, and somebody can move the puppet or rotate something and all of a sudden, you get these magical moments that come out of something unexpected. I like that, being able to reach out and touch the practical effects. I grew up on Fangoria magazine and watching Phil Tippett and Rick Baker. Whether it’s stop motion or if it is somebody in a suit or it’s a puppet, like the Puppet Master movies, I was obsessed with all of this stuff as a kid so I have so much respect for the artistry behind the crafts people that bring those things to life – in our case, Patrick Magee and his team – so I just can’t imagine turning my back on them, I guess in a way on the people that – whether I know them personally or not – made me want to become a filmmaker.

PopHorror: You said that there’s a time for CGI, which is true, but I don’t want to see CGI blood. That just drives me insane.

Jordan Downey: Oh, yeah.

PopHorror: If you could go back to the very first day of writing the script with Kevin Stewart and give yourselves one piece of advice, what would it be?

Jordan Downey: That’s a really good question. Day one of the script, we wrote a really big out treatment first, so I’ll count that as day one. Probably the biggest shift, and I don’t want to say it’s a waste of time because it was a discovery that needed to happen, but in the original script, Deborah’s character Meg was not the daughter of the man that they were investigating the murder for. He was a total stranger and she was being drawn to this – she was being brought in to help the police because she was an expert in her field – to investigate the life and death and whereabouts of this strange man and why his pale, naked corpse ended up at this crime scene with other people that had been killed. We wrote that draft and we got to the end when she starts to get into his domain and his space, and we just kind of realized that didn’t feel believable that you would cross this line for a stranger like that instead of just saying, “I’m turning back, let’s look at this tomorrow, but not tonight.” We just thought there’d be so much more weight here if she was related to this person because it may, even though she’s an expert in her field and shouldn’t let this stuff cloud her mind, it’s logical that that might have infiltrated that there’s two needs she needs to fulfill and it’s a personal and professional one. The advice would be, guys, just make it more personal from the start so we don’t waste time doing a draft that we didn’t need to write.

PopHorror: I’m glad that you changed that because I am not going to lie, I cried when she was watching the video that he made for her and her mom. I cried both times I watched it. I love when horror has a heart.

Thank you so much to Jordan for taking the time to chat with us! The Cycle is now on Shudder!