Nerdly » ‘Death Cycle’ VOD Review

09th Mar2026

‘Death Cycle’ VOD Review

by Alain Elliott

Stars: Kristen Kaster, Sasha Ormond, Matthew Ninaber, Justin Bott, Matt Daciw, James Fler, Wes Hill | Written by Dave McLeod | Directed by Gabriel Carrer

I’ll be honest, I was hoping for a slasher involving a cyclist (a description of a film I have actually seen before, but completely forgotten the name of). Death Cycle involves a motorcyclist, for me, not quite as much fun. We start by witnessing the brutal murder of a woman alongside her sister, who survives. This woman is then visited by a man looking to solve a series of murders by a person driving a motorcycle. The killer continues, and we are left guessing who the murderer is.

The opening scene, which has a very brutal murder, does set the tone for the movie, although those expecting non-stop death and gore will be a little bit disappointed. Even with a run time of about an hour and twenty minutes, Death Cycle’s pace does feel slow. Not slow enough that I got bored, but in between each hard-hitting moment of violence, there are long stretches of people talking, with the occasional shot of a motorcycle cruising down the road. But let’s focus on those deaths for a moment. There’s a little bit of originality that makes good use of the motorbike, and there’s some great camerawork that means we get to see all the guts and gore, even when we kinda don’t. There is a lot of blood and body parts destroyed, too. It’s definitely an upside to the movie. It is shot beautifully at times, with one particular birds-eye shot after a death looking fantastic.

The mystery of the whodunnit isn’t the toughest to figure out, but the simplicity of that didn’t affect my enjoyment, and I enjoyed the open-endedness of the movie that gave me Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street vibes. Unlike those movies though, I was not a fan of the villain of Death Cycle. Or more accurately, the look of the villain. Masks do often work really well, but I think part of the reason is that we can still see the eyes. There are usually glimpses at what kind of emotion they are feeling (or not), but with a huge black motorcycle helmet we get nothing. There’s no visual to give anything away. Which I understand is part of the reason it is used here, the filmmakers don’t want us to know who is under the helmet, but its benefits are outweighed by the negatives for me. It might just be the motorbike link, but Death Cycle reminded me of another excellent Frightfest film called Night Fare – go check that out if you haven’t before!

Acting performances are solid throughout and the action and death scenes are choreographed well. Death Cycle might just play things a little bit too seriously when I would have preferred an all-out slasher. It sometimes feels like it wants to have a similar style to a mystery murder series, where I think it might have been better with a little bit more action. The gore we get though is excellent and worth watching the movie for.