Review: Cuckoo

Director:  Tilman Singer

Stars:  Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick

Cuckoo is a strange bird. The sophomore feature from Tilman Singer (responsible for 2018 oddity Luz), it splices horror and science fiction in a manner often cryptic to the first-time viewer. Admirably – but frustratingly – shorn of exposition, it keeps us guessing and ill-at-ease as to where we are in its cagy narrative. It’s mixture of digital and analogue technologies dislocate it in time, making it hard to pinpoint exactly when its taking place. Backstories are foggy also; a definitive timeline would prove invaluable. Instead we’re left wandering blind corridors in a perpetual state of ‘WTF’, rather like gloomy protagonist Gretchen (Hunter Schafer).

Gretchen has reason to be upset. Still grieving the death of her mother an indeterminate time ago, she’s been moved to the foreign depths of the Bavarian Alps by her father Luis (Marton Csokas), along with his new partner Beth (Jessica Henwick) and their young daughter Alma (Mila Lieu). Luis – an architect – has been offered residence on site at a remote resort looking to expand; a picturesque but mysterious arrangement of chalets owned by Dan Stevens’ eccentric Herr König, hotelier and self-proclaimed ‘preservationist’, who gives off bad vibes from his first frame.

Cuckoo has a jumbled, almost rushed feeling, as though its been whittled down ruthlessly in the edit. Anyone who bumped up against the dialogue exchanges in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap might want to buckle in, as there’s not a single human interaction in Cuckoo that doesn’t feel like it’s had the wind taken out of it. In keeping with this sense of a story condensed, its no time at all before Weird Shit starts getting Gretchen looking for an escape route. Guests at the hotel have a habit of throwing up in the foyer, and there’s a startling hooded woman (Kalin Morrow) with red eyes hurtling about the grounds by night.

Schafer’s sullen Gretchen is a little hard to know – like any unhappy 17-year-old – but easier to empathise with thanks to her father’s disinterest in her that borders on the outright hostile. Slowly her brittle lifeline to the past becomes touchingly clear, and Schafer sells this well. What’s less easy to get a grip on is Singer’s hazily explained lore surrounding a rare species that Stevens’ König prizes above all else, and the convoluted methodology by which he is compelled to keep the line going.

If the mechanics behind Cuckoo are somewhat garbled, it does effectively place the film within a heritage of bizarre, half-remembered sci-fi horrors like Blue Sunshine, that make up for their messy, scattergun approach with distinctive visuals, oddball vibes and indelible, ill-fitting images. The colour palette is lurid and a little overripe. Coupled with the claustrophobic approach to editing, Singer successfully makes his body horror variant feel original, though there are echoes of other texts throughout.

Gretchen’s brief stint as an employee for König brought Ti West’s The Innkeepers to this viewer’s mind. The bizarre-o hospital has the waking-nightmare energy of the high rise in Jean Rollin’s amnesiac odyssey The Night of the Hunted and there’s something vaguely reminiscent of Drag Me To Hell in Singer’s crone-like she-beast. In spite of these touchstones (and one could cite others), Cuckoo doesn’t really feel like anything else, and that’s perhaps its greatest asset, providing it an unblinking energy to half-dash, half-trip its way over the finish line.

For all the questions left unanswered, perhaps it all boils down to a simple coming-of-age tale, as Gretchen wrestles with the terror of becoming a grown-up. Adulthood here is literally a grotesque reaching out of the darkness to do terrible things to her. The loss of her mother and the flexible configurations of family fold into this keenly. The story ends with a kind of acceptance of inevitable responsibility, even if the future is coloured darkly by threatening possibilities.

Singer’s images do linger. From Gretchen’s bandaged arm giving her a wing-like appearance, to the bracing ideas given form. A bedroom in an empty swimming pool. A nifty sequence involving library shelves descending like dominos.

Universal and Focus Features have absolutely fumbled the release of Cuckoo in the UK, after some strong in-cinema promotion. Perhaps its an eleventh hour lack of nerve (which seems especially odd in the wake of Longlegs; another recent acquisition from Neon that’s proven immensely successful). Dan Stevens even sarcastically took Focus to task on Instagram for their lack of backbone getting the movie in front of audiences. I took a day off work and travelled 60 miles to see it. An act of belligerence on my part, I’ll admit. I was going to see this fucking thing.

I don’t regret it. But I do, awkwardly, want to see the film again and soon. Which is as much of a recommendation as anything.

So… who’s up for a road trip?