Cuckoo – Review

Better late than never, I was finally able to catch Tilman Singer’s sophomore feature. After having just recently watched Luz (2018) for the first time, I was not sure what to expect.

Hunter Schafer stars as Gretchen, a 17-year-old girl who has just relocated to a remote resort in the German Alps with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). Just after the death of her mother, this move makes Gretchen feel not just geographically but emotionally isolated. Already feeling like an intruder on her father’s new family, she begins to feel further alienated as she begins to take notice of increasingly disturbing and strange occurrences on the premises of the resort.

Gretchen’s family is here to help build a new hotel for family friend Herr König (Dan Stevens), who is unnerving yet surprisingly silly. In fact, the film’s title encapsulates every character scattered through this film…absolutely cuckoo. The beauty of the resort’s scenery, shot flawlessly on 35 mm, is juxtaposed with the uncanny nature of its guests. It feels as though we have just been transported to a place akin to Twin Peaks, with each actor on screen feeling as if they have each been plucked from a different Lynchian reality. Gretchen takes a job offered to her by König working the front desk, priming her to become a part of these strange interactions like women throwing up in the lobby and hearing the disorienting ear-piercing screech coming from the woods. However, she seems to be the only put off, as if she is the stranger that does not belong.

Against all instructions to not work at the resort past 10 p.m. and to wait for König to pick her up, Gretchen bikes home from work late one night and is attacked in her first of many encounters with a creepy trench-cloaked figure that can be best described as a demented Hitchcock blonde. Things only get worse (and weirder) for Gretchen from here on out. Unable to escape the confines of the resort, she is tossed around like an inconvenient pawn in whatever scheme is hatching in these mountains.

Cuckoo is strange, to say the least. Its absurdity is homage to 70s and 80s Euro-horror, but the film is quick to point at its own silliness and hopes that we will stay seated for the ride. As it unwinds, it only becomes more disorienting, but Hunter Schafer’s Gretchen is the glue that holds Cuckoo together. She is a character that will make many viewers feel seen. She has an awkward nature, yet she is witty and unapologetically herself. Schafer fights hard as a new final girl able to hold her own against the mystifying scream king that is Stevens. There is a vulnerability to her that weaves this atmospheric fever dream with a grounded sense of loneliness. Cuckoo won’t be for everyone, but it will be a fun ride for genre fans who can appreciate this beautiful and silly little film.

Now, I want to get into a little bit of the analysis that I came away from this film with. Which means… Warning: spoilers ahead…

The preservation of the strange species lurking around the resort is happening through the disruption of the traditional family unit. However, this quest and the part her family plays in it, is entirely shaken by Gretchen’s presence which is made possible by the fact that their family is already broken. The older daughter from a previous marriage, Gretchen feels that she is an intruder. Insistent that her stepmother is not her mother, “she’s Beth,” and that Alma is not her sister, she is returning the rejection that she feels emanating from her father. (Spoiler incoming) Her half-sister’s muteness and the seizures triggered by the screeching coming from the woods, are both revealed to be evidence that Alma is the offspring of the species Mr. König is working to preserve. Like Cuckoo birds, this species engages in a form of brood parasitism, implanting their offspring within the women who visit the resort for them to be raised by these surrogate families until they are ready to join their own. This further removes Gretchen and Alma, who were already understood to not be sisters.

Feeling alone due to the death of her mother, Gretchen feels implanted the same way Alma has–left by her mother to be cared for by this family, left feeling like she belongs to another species. Ironically, it is her hybrid not-so-half sister who is the only one able to bridge the gap. Gretchen moves through this film unable to be heard, symbolically mirroring Alma’s muteness, but finds small moments to connect with Alma. Once we get to the end of the film, there is a strong sense of sisterhood between the two, a theme that was a total surprise for me, and the only way they make it out is by shielding each other from the threats coming from all around them.

Within this cooky funhouse of horrors, there’s a heartfelt examination of Gretchen’s grief. Her isolation is thwarted by accepting the connection between her and Alma, whether or not that connection is blood. While the film may seem like it does little to go beyond the shock, leaving much to be desired in the audience’s quest to understand the film’s cryptid-like monster, the sadness in Cuckoo‘s bird call will ring true for many.

Catch Cuckoo in theaters while you still can!