Writer/Director Tilman Singer continues his streak of experimental high-concept horror with his sophomore effort, Cuckoo. The filmmaker boldly marches to the beat of his own drum, examining heady themes of grief, reproduction, and gendered expectations through inventive, playful horror. That Cuckoo plays it fast and loose with details and plotting means that this body horror entry will likely polarize, but lovers of weird cinema will find a lot of charm in Singer’s latest.
After a peculiar cold open that won’t make sense until much later in the film, Cuckoo introduces seventeen-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer). The moody teen wears her disdain plainly as she’s dragged by her father, Luis (Marton Csókás), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and her mute 7-year-old stepsister Alma (Mila Lieu) to the Bavarian Alps resort where Alma was conceived. Gretchen’s deep in the throes of grief over the loss of her mother, whose memory she clings to by calling their old phone and leaving messages. She feels unwanted by her dad’s new family, and the creepy German resort owner, Mr. König (Dan Stevens), makes her feel even more uncomfortable despite giving her a job at the resort front desk. Gretchen is so unsettled by Mr. König that she ignores his desperate pleas to be home before dark, leading to bizarre encounters with a stalking, shrieking woman.
Singer is less interested in plotting than atmosphere, horror freak-outs, and his protagonist’s volatile emotional state. More specifically, how Gretchen’s internal journey parallels what’s happening at the resort. Schafer’s Gretchen initially comes across as the typical angsty teen, but it soon becomes apparent that she’s masking terrible pain made worse by feeling like an outsider. Gretchen wants nothing more than to return home to the US, but Singer throws every possible obstacle her way to prevent that, including a massive amount of bodily trauma that forces the teen into survival mode with handicapped odds. The worse the stalking and weird aural encounters get, the more isolated Gretchen becomes, as everyone around her assumes she’s acting out.
It’s the performances that carry Cuckoo. Singer focuses on what’s important to his themes and overarching story and discards anything that he deems superfluous in a way that will drive plot-focused audiences to frustration. Supporting players get forgotten and left behind frequently when shit hits the metaphorical fan. Certain plot beats get ignored entirely for the sake of forward momentum. Thanks to a poignant, committed turn from Schafer, who deftly navigates Singer’s quirky sense of humor while nailing the emotional intensity in the same breath, Cuckoo becomes far more accessible despite its weird narrative shorthand.
Then there’s the villainous Mr. König. Dan Stevens is always at his most fascinating when sinking his teeth into peculiar character roles, and he has ample room to flex his quirky character actor muscles with Mr. König. He’s the perfect disarming foil at first until the shackles come off, and he gets to let loose in thrilling ways. Of course, Mr. König may be the film’s ultimate monster, but Cuckoo has an actual bizarre creature, and the film’s title holds the key. Don’t expect Singer to unveil any firm details about it until late in the runtime, though, opting instead to let viewers discover the zaniness when he’s ready to unleash it. But what I will tease is that vaginal discharge gets employed to ominous, skin-crawling effect here.
There’s inventive worldbuilding on display that sets this high-concept horror movie apart and a few intense horror cat-and-mouse scenes that deliver palpable tension. But Singer approaches it with a playful sense of humor that only further nudges Cuckoo into the realm of weird cinema. It’s so refreshingly unconventional and unpredictable in every way, right down to its raucous, entertainingly silly finale, that it’s hard to care about all of the plot that gets discarded along the way. It certainly helps that Cuckoo belongs to Schafer and Stevens, too.
Cuckoo screened at SXSW and will release in theaters on May 3, 2024.