Interview: The Practical Magic of THE CYCLE with Deborah Ann Woll, Jeffrey Donovan and Jordan Downey

This interview contains detailed spoilers for The Cycle, now on Shudder.

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Jordan Downey’s The Cycle has officially howled its way to screens big and small, and it brings with it all the shock and awe of a werewolf movie completely unafraid of showcasing its practical monstrosity. Part police procedural, part creature feature, the film tests the viewer’s perception of what’s possible in more ways than one. As a result, we had to sit down with director Jordan Downey and stars Deborah Ann Woll and Jeffrey Donovan to chat about how they brought their scrappy undead werewolf flick to life.

The Cycle plays a very clever trick well before we get to the practical monster. The audience’s perception of reality changes alongside Meg’s (Deborah Ann Woll). How did you bring that to life?

Deborah Ann Woll: Jordan and I talked a lot about that she's, [Meg’s] a clinician, right? She's a scientist. She is always going to look at every step of this and she's going to come to the most logical conclusion, the most logical solution until all of those are knocked out. I think it's a Sherlock Holmes quote, but it's the idea of when all possibilities have been exhausted, all that's left is the impossible. That feels like the kind of structure of this story so that by the time we get to the quote unquote supernatural element of the story, the werewolf, we feel like we've earned it

It feels more like a disease than a monster on some level. Uh, and I thought that that was really clever. That we are also doing this along with her emotional story so that as she's cut off from her emotions and every step along the way she's opening up a little bit more to the vulnerability of this loss and this grief. We are also opening ourselves up more and more to the story. I really appreciated that it worked on so many levels thematically.

Jordan Downey: What the movie becomes is not possible at the beginning of the movie for anyone in this world. It is like, you know, folklore is a part of this world, but in the same way that Mulder and Scully would go around, but, and they would know that there could be a thing supernatural, but the townspeople didn't. It was the first time they had had those experiences.

There's gotta be some of the language of the later half of the movie, whether that's certain shots or the sound design or the score that's present early in the movie so that while you're watching a Zodiac, Se7en, or True Detective kind of film, you're seeing things, you're like, "This feels like the language of a horror film, but we're not really getting full horror." Whether we got that balance right or not, that's up to the audience to tell me.

How did having a practical werewolf to play off of inform your performance? Were there any unexpected challenges that arose because of it? 

Jeffrey Donovan: I mean it was thrilling to work with an artist like Trevor [Newlyn, the werewolf performer]. It was remarkable that he was able to manipulate this thing in ways that, even though you knew it was an actor and you knew it was a mechanical feature to his body, he made it seem real. It gave you so much more than acting against a piece of tape on a wall or a big huge green screen. It definitely informed me, but, but it was also just, just fun to have around. I was like, "Look at how cool this filmmaking is."

Woll: The only challenge of it is that you're having so much fun that you have to kind of remind yourself, “oh yeah, this is supposed to be scary.” You're a little bit in awe of it. Bu that actually worked for me because another thing I had spoken with Jordan about right from the beginning is that I think she's as fascinated by this as a scientist as she is scared of it, right?

There’s another really clever aspect of the storytelling that flips the film on its head. We meet Ian (Will Hochman) and assume he’s going to be the love interest who helps Meg through her journey and then NOPE! Off he goes. Can you talk about why that twist was critical?

Donovan: I think that's such a wonderful part of the film. When Jordan and I talked about it in the beginning and in kind of an earlier version, Marks was kind of the alpha in the room and kind of knowledgeable. I said, "If you are gonna play the Bait and Switch with Will's character, you should build him up even more. I think we should really feel like I'm the third wheel. These two are gonna get together. I'm just gonna be a proud dad." So we worked really hard on that and I'm so glad it paid off because it also works for me as the actor is saying, ironically, "This isn't my movie." Then he [Marks] is like, "Hold on, wait a minute. I should not be here.” There were so many like meta levels of this

Downey: That's my favorite twist. Everyone wants to talk about the creature twist, but I actually, I... Well, I don't wanna say it's my favorite, it's just that's the one that doesn't get mentioned that I really appreciated and proud of because that was very purposeful that we thought “Let's have all kinds of little shifts in this movie.” Any movie should, right? To always keep you on your toes, and not be predictable. We loved the idea that we could introduce this strange dynamic of the son actually being higher in rank than the father in their jobs. And that, well, we'll introduce [Meg and Ian]. We're not gonna have any, any overt, like, romance between the two, but we're gonna hint at it in a really subtle way. Will and Deborah did a great job. They were very aware of this intention of letting the audience think we're gonna go in that direction. 

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Donovan, for those first 20 minutes, you're like, "Why is he in this movie? He's just kinda standing in the background." Because we thought that it would be really cool then that you've taken something from both of these characters at different times in their lives, and that the crazy scenario in this movie is gonna bring Meg and Marks together. Hopefully the death of his son and ultimately what you believe when you're watching the movie, that the burning of the corpse will throw your scent off of where we're going with it because you're just not sure.

The Cycle’s crown jewel is, of course, its exceptional practical effects. For Downey there was no other option, but we wanted to get to the bottom about what about this specific creature design spoke to him, and why there was never any other way. 

Downey: I just gravitate towards practical effects in general. It always has to be that. If visual effects or CG is important to a movie, then great, whatever gives you the best result, but in my mind, nine out of 10 times, that's gonna be something practical.The werewolf transformations, especially Rick Baker and Rob Bottin and Howling and American Werewolf in London, those are so synonymous with practical effects in general. Like, if you open up any makeup effects book, there'll be a chapter on those sequences. No one has really attempted anything at that level for so long. So when we had the idea for this, we thought, okay, well, one of the most important things is we've gotta do a proper transformation. No shying away from it no matter what the budget is. We gotta show it and let's see what that looks like with modern cameras, modern technology. What can we pull off? Because it just hadn't been attempted in 40 years, really.

There's so many werewolf movies, but they usually shy away or don't really go the distance. So then the design itself was so tied to the concept that a corpse could come back from the dead and become a werewolf. It's scrawny. The wolf itself, it doesn't look like a werewolf died and then decayed. It looks like it malfunctioned in the transformation process. So it's kind of asymmetrical, like its eyes are a little off and there's some pock marks and, and errors on one half of its face, but not the other. Its spine’s a little twisted because, in my mind, when he was fully alive, he would've been walking on two feet.

The human is dead, so the human portion of walking is kind of been eliminated from the monster, and it is now on all fours. Because of that, its spine’s a little twisted and running around on all fours. So all of those random ideas and conversations were just, you know, given to Patrick McGee and, and his team, and they were then sort of like, "Okay, well, great. Now h- here's how, from our expertise, we implement that stuff and then add their own touch." It’s really cool how it turned out, I think.

Some quotes have been edited for clarity and length.