Movie Review: ‘Cuckoo’

The unsettling ‘Cuckoo’ keeps you off-balance with great performances from Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens – even if you’re not sure what’s going on.

Hunter Schafer in 'Cuckoo'. Photo: Neon.

Opening in theaters on August 9th is ‘Cuckoo,’ directed by Tilman Singer and starring Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Mila Lieu, Jan Bluthardt, and Marton Csokas.

Initial Thoughts

Hunter Schafer in 'Cuckoo'. Photo: Neon.

German filmmaker Tilman Singer made a splash a few years back on the festival circuit with his horror feature debut, ‘Luz,’ and now he’s returned with a second entry in what could shape up to be one of the more loopy, esoteric filmographies in the genre if he sticks with it. ‘Cuckoo’ starts off on a weird note and gets even stranger from there, finding a nice balance between a serious sense of dread and an underlying tone of camp for most of its running time.

It begins to run into problems in its third act, and while we shy away from movies over-explaining everything, ‘Cuckoo’ could use a bit more clarity down the homestretch. But it’s still a satisfying watch in many ways, thanks especially to excellent work from Hunter Schafer and the magnificent Dan Stevens.

Story and Direction

'Cuckoo' director Tilman Singer.

Hunter Schafer (best known for her main role on ‘Euphoria’ but also recently showing up in ‘Kinds of Kindness’) plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old girl who is mourning the death of her mother. She’s forced to accompany her father (Martin Csokas), his wife (Jessica Henwick), and their mute young daughter Alma (Mila Lieu) to the Bavarian Alps, where her architect father has been hired to redesign a resort owned by Herr König (Dan Stevens).

The Alps are beautiful, mysterious and vast, the aging, nearly empty resort broods on the side of a mountain, and Herr König himself is a ready-made mix of slippery charm and underlying menace who offers Gretchen a job at the hotel’s front desk. Grieving, angry, and bored (she also plays bass in a rock band that she’s been obliged to leave behind), Gretchen takes the gig – and immediately strange things start to happen.

A woman wanders into the lobby in a sort of trance and begins to vomit, Alma herself has some kind of seizure that seems to actually cause time itself to glitch (a callback to an enigmatic scene that opens the film involving a different character), and worst of all, Gretchen is attacked one night while riding her bike by a woman in a hood with glowing eyes who emits a piercing, animalistic shriek. Herr König seems to both dismiss what’s happening while knowing full well what’s going on, and Gretchen’s one attempt to escape – with a young hotel guest (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) who takes a shine to her – ends in a serious car accident that puts the teen in the hospital.

(L to R) Greta Fernández and Hunter Schafer in 'Cuckoo'. Photo: Neon.

Up to this point, ‘Cuckoo’ has been building up a steady underlying sense of weird, queasy malevolence, thanks to the atmospheric setting, Singer’s use of silence and darkness, and the growing feeling that Gretchen is trapped in some of kind of waking nightmare where logic doesn’t quite apply. The late involvement of a former cop named Henry (Jan Bluthardt) who’s investigating his wife’s death points to the mystery eventually getting uncovered – which only partially happens.

While the film’s third act is more action-oriented – as the injured Gretchen teams with Henry and moves to rescue a character she had previously shown little concern for – the explanation for what is happening at the hotel, the area around it, and a nearby medical lab in which Herr König is also involved remains frustratingly opaque. Without spoiling anything, it does tie into the bird of the film’s title, but in a way that’s still maddeningly unclear. As we said earlier, films don’t have to clarify everything; in fact, when it comes to horror, the lack of a clear rationale for the events of the story or the menace behind them often makes the narrative more terrifying.

But Singer keeps the full contingent of secrets in ‘Cuckoo’ just out of reach, which doesn’t work as well once the film switches from atmospheric slow burn to wild-and-reckless homestretch. The movie accumulates an accelerating stream of bizarre moments on top of what we’ve already seen, yet none of it comes together in a way that quite makes sense. The result is still a fun, creepy ride, but lacks a satisfying resolution.

The Cast

Hunter Schafer in 'Cuckoo'. Photo: Neon.

Not having seen ‘Euphoria,’ we can only go on our recent experiences with Hunter Schafer on the big screen, and ‘Cuckoo’ shows her to be a confident, fearless actor with lots of presence and emotional weight. Gretchen surfs a full range of reactions and feelings here, from grief to loneliness to rebelliousness to terror, and Schafer pulls them all off while keeping the character grounded, intelligent, and empathetic. It’s an impressive lead performance that bodes well for Schafer’s future beyond her breakout work on ‘Euphoria.’

Opposite her is the great Dan Stevens, who is having a hell of a year between this, ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,’ and ‘Abigail.’ A resourceful, wide-ranging, and chameleonic actor, Stevens plays Herr König with a nice mix of low-key authority and gleeful malevolence, gradually making the performance bigger as the story goes off in stranger directions. Like Schafer, he is (and has been for a while) a compelling presence onscreen, and he’s uniquely suited to playing charming villains with outrageous accents. Although he’s hampered in some ways by the way his character (poorly, it must be said) explains what’s happening in his pastoral little kingdom, Stevens continues to deliver in what has become one of the most formidable under-the-radar acting resumes around.

The rest of the cast is small and relatively unknown, but our only disappointment is that Jessica Henwick – so terrific in ‘Iron Fist,’ ‘The Matrix Resurrections,’ ‘Glass Onion,’ and ‘The Royal Hotel’ – gets underused here as Gretchen’s stepmother Beth.

Final Thoughts

Dan Stevens in 'Cuckoo'. Photo: Neon.

‘Cuckoo’ takes its cues from ‘70s and ‘80s horror cinema, particularly indie and/or European efforts like David Cronenberg’s ‘The Brood’ (big Cronenberg energy here, in fact), Dario Argento’s ‘Phenomena,’ Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now,’ and Jorge Grau’s ‘Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.’ All those films operate in a territory that veers back and forth between realism and nightmare, an aesthetic that Tilman Singer is clearly influenced by and successfully channels.

That atmosphere can only take you so far, however, and Singer’s build-up of surreal story beats, genuinely unnerving imagery (as in the scene where Gretchen is chased on her bike) and thick atmosphere leads to a climax that is more perplexing than transcendent, with a wobblier grasp of the film’s brew of terror and camp. That may be where he wants his strange bird of a movie to ultimately land, but as a result ‘Cuckoo’ doesn’t quite sustain the horror heights that it aims for.

‘Cuckoo’ receives 7 out of 10 stars.

Cuckoo

"Fear its call."

R1 hr 43 minAug 2nd, 2024

Showtimes & Tickets

Watch Cuckoo Online

What is the plot of ‘Cuckoo’?

After reluctantly moving to the German Alps with her father (Marton Csokas) and his new family, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) discovers that their new town hides sinister secrets, as she's plagued by strange noises and frightening visions of a woman pursuing her.