Hunter Schafer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
Opening In theaters August 9th is ‘CuckooDirected by Tilman Singer and starring Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, My place, Jan Bluthardtand Marton Csokas.
Related Article: Director Tilman Singer Talks ‘Cuckoo’ and Working with Hunter Schafer
Initial thoughts
Hunter Schafer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
German filmmaker Tilman Singer made a splash on the festival circuit a few years ago with his horror debut, ‘Light,’ and now he’s back with a second installment of what could become one of the most off-kilter and esoteric filmographies in the genre if he keeps it up. ‘Cuckoo’ starts off on a strange 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.
The film starts to struggle in the third act, and while we’re moving away from over-explaining films, Cuckoo could use a bit more clarity in the final stretch. But it’s still a satisfying film in many ways, especially thanks to the excellent work of Hunter Schafer and the magnificent Dan Stevens.
History and direction
‘Cuckoo’ director Tilman Singer.
Hunter Schafer (best known for her leading role in ‘Euphoria” but has also recently appeared in ‘Types of kindness‘) plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old grieving the death of her mother. She is forced to accompany her father (Martin Csokas), his wife (Jessica Henwick) and their mute 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 hotel complex, old and almost empty, is perched on the side of a mountain and Herr König is a perfect mix of elusive charm and latent menace who offers Gretchen a job at the hotel reception. Sad, angry and bored (she also plays bass in a rock band she was forced to leave), Gretchen accepts the job and immediately strange things start to happen.
A woman enters the lobby in a kind of trance and begins to vomit, Alma herself suffers some sort of seizure that seems to cause time itself to fail (a nod to an enigmatic scene that opens the film involving a different character), and worst of all, Gretchen is attacked one night while riding her bicycle by a hooded woman with glowing eyes who emits a piercing, animalistic scream. Herr König seems to dismiss what is happening while knowing full well what is going on, and Gretchen’s only attempt to escape, with a young hotel guest (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) who is attracted to her, ends up in a serious car accident that lands the teenager in the hospital.
(From left to right) Greta Fernandez and Hunter Schafer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
Up to this point, Cuckoo has been building an underlying sense of strange, unpleasant malevolence, thanks to the atmospheric setting, Singer’s use of silence and darkness, and the growing sense that Gretchen is trapped in some kind of nightmare in which logic doesn’t quite work. The late involvement of an ex-cop named Henry (Jan Bluthardt) who is investigating his wife’s death points to the mystery eventually being uncovered, which it only partially does.
Though the film’s third act is more action-oriented (a wounded Gretchen teams up with Henry and moves to rescue a character she’d previously shown little concern for), the explanation of what’s going on at the hotel, the area around it, and a nearby medical lab that Herr König is also involved with remains frustratingly opaque. Without giving anything away, it ties back to the bird of the film’s title, but in a way that remains maddeningly confusing. As we said before, movies don’t have to spell everything out – in fact, when it comes to horror, the lack of a clear justification for the story’s events or the threat behind them often makes the narrative scarier.
But Singer keeps the entire contingent of secrets in “Cuckoo” out of our reach, which doesn’t work so well once the film moves from a slow, atmospheric buildup to a wild, reckless final stretch. The film piles a racing stream of strange moments on top of what we’ve already seen, but none of it comes together in a way that makes much sense. The result is still a fun, creepy ride, but it lacks a satisfying resolution.
The cast
Hunter Schafer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
Having not seen Euphoria, we can only go by our recent experiences with Hunter Schafer on the big screen, and Cuckoo shows her to be a confident, fearless actress with plenty of presence and emotional weight. Gretchen navigates a wide range of reactions and feelings, from grief to loneliness to rebellion 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 and this, ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,’ and ‘Abigail.’ A witty, wide-ranging, chameleon-like actor, Stevens plays Herr König with a nice mix of understated authority and gleeful malevolence, which gradually makes the performance bigger as the story takes stranger turns. Like Schafer, he is (and has been for a while) a compelling screen presence, and he’s uniquely suited to playing charming villains with outrageous accents. Though he’s hampered in some ways by the way his character (poorly, it must be said) explains what’s going on in his little pastoral kingdom, Stevens still delivers on what has become one of the most formidable, little-known acting resumes in the world.
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‘ ‘Crystal onion,’ and ‘The Royal Hotel‘ – is underused here as Beth, Gretchen’s stepmother.
Final thoughts
Dan Stevens in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
‘Cuckoo’ is inspired by horror films from the 70s and 80s, particularly independent and/or European films such as David Cronenberg‘s’The breeding(great Cronenberg energy here, indeed), Dario Argento‘s’Phenomena,’ Nicholas Roeg‘s’Don’t look now,’ and Jorge Grau‘Let Sleeping Corpses Lie’ is a film that moves between realism and nightmare, an aesthetic that clearly influences Tilman Singer and which he manages to channel successfully.
That atmosphere can only take you so far, though, and the accumulation of surreal narrative beats, genuinely unnerving imagery (such as in the scene where Gretchen is chased on her bike) and dense atmosphere leads to a climax that is more unnerving than transcendent, with a more hesitant grasp on the film’s mix of terror and over-the-top. That may be where his strange film ultimately lands, but as a result, Cuckoo fails to sustain the heights of terror it strives for.
‘Cuckoo’ receives 7 out of 10 stars.
“Fear his call.”
After reluctantly moving to the German Alps with her father and his new family, Gretchen discovers that her new town hides sinister secrets as… Read the plot
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 her new town holds sinister secrets as it is plagued by strange noises and terrifying visions of a woman haunting her.
Who is in the cast of ‘Cuckoo’?
- Hunter Schafer as Gretchen
- Dan Stevens as Mr. König
- Jessica Henwick as Beth
- Marton Csokas as Louis
Dan Stevens in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.