Cuckoo Review
Reproductive horror is having a moment. Thanks to the likes of Immaculate and The First Omen, stories about people unwittingly or unwillingly birthing supernatural entities are popping up at a rate unseen since their 1970s heyday – undoubtedly tied (as it was then) to the current political climate. But that’s not to say that they’ve become so common they’ve lost all their potency: Cuckoo, the second feature from German director Tilman Singer, both leans into and dissects the hallmarks of this subgenre, to delightfully indelible results. It’s both outlandishly silly and sickeningly horrific, a heady balance that its director only sometimes steers too far in one direction.
Leading with this aspect of Cuckoo probably won’t spoil anything for those who know the bird’s reproductive habits. They’re commonly known as brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species, and thereby forcing the oblivious surrogates to raise their young – an arrangement that’s often fatal to their nestmates and their adoptive parents. Cuckoo sets its own story of a dislocated youth deep in the German Alps, where Gretchen (a surly and sharp Hunter Schafer) has been sent to live with her father (Marton Csokas), his glamorous second wife (Jessica Henwick), and their mute yet sweet daughter Alma (Mila Lieu) after the death of Gretchen’s mother. Her father and begrudging stepmother are busy assisting the enigmatic Herr König (Dan Stevens in “creepy German mad scientist” mode) with his local resort venture, but Gretchen soon discovers that Herr König has interests beyond the hospitality industry, mainly involving a sinister presence lurking in the nearby wilderness.
Singer is no stranger to the outlandish and the gruesome – his previous feature, the hallucinatory horror film Luz, spins a gory tale of hypnotism and demonic possession that has all the freewheeling sensibilities and film grain static of a vintage B-movie creepshow. That sense of daring means he really goes for it when it comes to Cuckoo’s ickier aspects – so squeamish viewers may want to steel themselves for that. That said, Cuckoo is also plenty goofy, thanks to the general absurdity of what the movie ends up actually being about, as well as Stevens and his mincing little accent. It’s so nice that the former Downton Abbey star has fully branded himself as the guy you go to when you need a little stinker.
The whole enterprise has a charming retro feel to it, though it takes place in the present day – the iPhone pops of Gretchen texting in a couple of scenes serve as a gentle reminder that’s easy to forget once Cuckoo loses itself in boxy little European cars, cassette recorders, and cool oversized jackets. Singer uses the setting to his advantage: One sequence involving a character tracking her pursuer by watching their shadow growing ever closer in the light given off by street lamps is straight up chilling. Cuckoo’s atmosphere, helped along by its 35mm cinematography, calls to mind The Shining, A Cure for Wellness, and the Thomas Mann novel The Magic Mountain – anything set at a remote retreat designed to isolate its occupants from both the outside world and the passage of time itself.
Cuckoo plays with these aspects somewhat literally: Whenever someone encounters the thing stalking the woods at night, they’re forced to repeat certain actions as if they’re stuck in a time loop. It happens a lot in later scenes, and the momentum slows down as a result. The final act, revolving around an elongated, violent confrontation, drags in a way that makes Cuckoo feel much longer than its actual 103-minute runtime. There’s a sense of certain things being hammered at you, while other, sometimes more interesting thematic elements go unaddressed.
Still, it’s genuinely very cool how Cuckoo balances some truly traumatic material with its twisted sense of humor – it’s just ridiculous enough to keep from being un-fun. Schafer in particular is the perfect prickly counterpart to Stevens’ oily-smooth swindler, the type of kid who sees through all the adult bullshit she’s subjected to. Her character gets pretty banged-up, eventually saddled with a metal arm brace that, though restricting, gives off a definite Furiosa vibe – like an NPC in a Hideo Kojima video game. Along with a central thread about the affection that exists between sisters, these are the types of things that temper the shock value and make Cuckoo work.
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