Allusional rather than visceral, Cuckoo is a stew of horror sub-genres served with a big side order of Grimm, and is pretty fabulous if you are used to drinking deeply at the well of the macabre. If you are not a horror nut, it’s probably a bit less necessary though fascinating all the same.
It’s the story of a young woman who has been uprooted from her old life in the USA after the death of her mother and taken to Germany, where Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is now expected to fit in with her estranged dad’s family without making a fuss.
Dad Luis (Marton Csokas) is now married to Beth (Jessica Henwick, so soon into the mother roles?). Together they have a daughter, Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute and possibly sees her half sister as a forcible imposition, a cuckoo in the nest.
Director Tilman Singer beavers away at setting up a spooky mood while Gretchen explores her new home. Here, everything seems just a touch off. The resort where they are staying is run by a too-chummy German called König (Dan Stevens). There’s a strange clinic nearby. At the hotel where she soon has a job on the front desk guests are regularly throwing up for some inexplicable reason. Gretchen’s sister, Alma, is soon also being plagued by something, a variation on epilepsy, the doctors suggest.
Something is up. Eventually it takes on a shape, a manifestation in the shape of a howling, gibbering, zombie-like apparition we might as well call a banshee.
Singer ups the WTF-ery even further by throwing in unsettling disturbances, some visual (actions repeating themselves), others sonic (ululation emitting from Alma’s throat). The suspicion is that everything can be traced back to the clinic, and that König is somehow behind it all.
Gretchen as a name was once upon a time a diminutive of the more formal Margaret. Another diminutive for Margaret is Gretel, and this is very much the story of a poor girl lost in the woods. There’s no Hansel to hold her hand, but look around a bit and there’s an obvious wicked stepmother. The screaming hag is a wicked queen. Later a cop comes to Gretchen’s aid. Could he be a handsome prince? And what about König himself, who periodically parps on a wooden flute. The Pied Piper leading children to their doom?
You can ignore all the Grimm references and Tilman Singer’s film still works on its own terms as a story about a young woman grieving a dead parent in a place (physical or otherwise) that is foreign to her. Singer introduces fascinating but off-centre side characters, like the raunchy hotel guest Ed (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) and hotel receptionist Trixie (Greta Fernández), and when Henry (Jan Bluthard) turns up – the cop/handsome prince whose kiss will perhaps waken Gretchen from her nightmare – he also turns out to be not quite what he seems.
It’s a German-American co-production and it really benefits from its strong casting. All the actors are good but the bulk of it falls on Schafer and Stevens, she best known from the TV show Euphoria, while Stevens brings his ability to speak fluent German to the role of König, who he plays as a cross between a mad Nazi and a Bond villain. (See also I’m Your Man in which Stevens played a deadpan German love robot – funny) .
It’s all very smart, accomplished but it works so well because at key moments Singer can call on Schafer to deliver the emotional element to push the film from the impressive into the effective. She delivers.
I’d happily watch this again, this time around to watch Tilman’s technique, the way his camera switches from objective to subjective so fluidly, the subtle offbeat performances he gets from his cast and the cheeky but understated cross references to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (also set at a remote hotel). Time, I think, to also check out Tilman’s only other feature, Luz from 2018.
Cuckoo – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
