Movie Review: Cuckoo

Opening in theaters on August 9th is ‘Cuckoo’, directed by Tilman Singer and starring Hunter Schaefer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Mila Liu, Jan Bluthard and Marten Sokas.

Initial thoughts

German filmmaker Tilmann Singer took the festival circuit by storm a few years ago with his horror feature debut ‘Luz’ and now he’s back with another entry in what could be one of the more loopy, distinctive filmographies. Style if he sticks with it. ‘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 time.

It starts to run into problems in its third act, and while we shy away from films that over-explain everything, ‘Cuckoo’ could use a bit more clarity in the homestretch. But it’s still a satisfying watch in many ways, thanks in particular to the excellent work of Hunter Shaffer and the magnificent Dan Stevens.

Story and direction

Hunter Schaeffer (best known for his lead role on ‘Euphoria’, but also recently appeared in ‘Kinds of Kindness’) plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old girl who is grieving the death of her mother. She is forced to move with her father (Martin Sokas), his wife (Jessica Henwick), and their mute young daughter Alma (Mila Liu) to the Bavarian Alps, where her architect father is hired to redesign a resort owned by Herr König (Dan). have come Stevens).

The Alps are beautiful, mysterious, and vast, an aging, nearly empty resort broods on the side of the mountain, and Herr König himself is the ready mix of slippery charm and underlying danger that lands Gretchen a job at the hotel’s front desk. Hurt, angry, and bored (she also plays bass in a rock band she’s forced to leave behind), Gretchen takes the gig—and soon strange things start happening.

A woman wanders into the lobby in a sort of trance and begins to vomit, Alma herself suffers a kind of shock that actually causes a time warp herself (a callback to a mysterious scene that opens the film involving a different character), and worst of all is that one night while riding her bike Gretchen is attacked by a woman with glowing eyes who emit piercing, animalistic screams. Herr König dismisses both of them, knowing full well what’s going on, and Gretchen’s one attempt to escape – with a young hotel guest (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) who takes a shine to her – ends in a serious car accident. Happens, a teenager in the hospital.

Up until this point, ‘Cuckoo’ has been building a steady underlying sense of strange, vague evil, the atmospheric setting, the singer’s use of silence and darkness and the growing sense that Gretchen is trapped in some sort of waking nightmare. Where logic doesn’t quite apply. The mystery finally unravels – only partially – with the late involvement of an ex-cop named Henry (Jan Bluthard) who is investigating his wife’s death.

While the film’s third act is more action-oriented—as an injured Gretchen teams up with Henry and steps in to rescue a character she previously showed little concern for—the explanation of what’s happening in the hotel, its surroundings, and the immediate vicinity is medical. The lab that Herr König is also involved in remains frustratingly opaque. Without spoiling anything, it connects to the bird of the film’s title, but in a way that’s still unclear. As we said earlier, movies don’t have to explain everything; In fact, when it comes to horror, the lack of a clear rationale for the story’s events or the dangers behind them often makes the narrative even scarier.

But Singer keeps a whole troop of secrets just out of reach in ‘Cuckoo’, which doesn’t work once the film switches from an atmospheric slow burn to a wild and reckless home. The movie accumulates a rapid stream of weird moments on top of what we’ve already seen, yet none of them come together in a way that quite makes sense. The result is still a fun, creepy ride, but lacks a satisfying resolution.

cast

Without having seen ‘Euphoria’, we can only go by our recent experiences with Hunter Schaeffer on the big screen, and ‘Cookoo’ shows her as a confident, fearless actor with a lot of presence and emotional weight. Gretchen surfs the full range of reactions and emotions here, from grief to loneliness to rebellion and terror, and Shafer pulls it all off while keeping the character grounded, intelligent, and sympathetic. It’s an impressive lead performance that bodes well for Shafer’s future beyond his breakout work on ‘Euphoria.’

Opposite him is the great Dan Stevens, who is taking a year off between ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ and ‘Abigail’. A resourceful, broad, and chameleon actor, Stevens plays Herr König with a fine blend of low-key authority and gleeful malevolence, gradually building up the performance as the story moves in unknown directions. Like Shaffer, he is (and has been for a while) a compelling screen presence, and he’s uniquely suited to playing charming villains with obnoxious accents. Although he’s hampered in some ways by his character’s (let’s say weak) explanation of what’s going on in his pastoral little kingdom, Stevens continues to deliver what has become one of the most formidable under-the-radar performances around. is

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’ – is underused here. Gretchen’s stepmother Beth.

Final thoughts

‘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 ‘Dawn’ . t Look Now,’ and George Grau’s ‘Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.’ All of those films operate in a territory that oscillates back and forth between realism and nightmare, an aesthetic that Tillman Singer is clearly influenced by and successfully channels.

That atmosphere can only take you so far, though, and Singer’s surreal story beats, genuinely unsettling imagery (such as in the scene where Gretchen is being chased on her bike) and intense atmosphere lead to a climax that’s more than transcendent. is confusing. , with a confusing sense of the film’s simmering terror and campiness. It may be where he wants his strange bird of a movie to finally land, but as a result ‘Cuckoo’ doesn’t sustain the terrifying heights it aims for.

‘Cuckoo’ gets 7 out of 10 stars.

What is the plot of ‘Cuckoo’?

After reluctantly moving to the German Alps with her father (Martin Sokas) and his new family, Gretchen (Hunter Schaefer) discovers that their new town hides terrible secrets, as she is plagued by strange voices and terrifying visions of a woman who stalks her.

Who is in the cast of ‘Koyal’?

• Hunter Shafer as Gretchen
• Dan Stevens as Mr. Koenig
• Jessica Henwick as Beth
• Marten Sokas as Louis