Few things are as disappointing as watching a movie grow into itself only to cop out on the ending. Worse is seeing a filmmaker craft a mood and tension only to end it with of all things a shoot-out. Yet, if the movie is good enough, it won’t be a complete waste of time.
Such is the case with Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo. Singer wrote and directed Cuckoo, a folk-horror movie that works best when we don’t know what’s going on. It’s safe to say Singer the director is better than Singer the writer.
For Singer, the director creates a space for Hunter Schafer’s Gretchen to carry Cuckoo on her back with ease. The role hints at Schafer’s burgeoning movie-star career if Hollywood has the guts. It helps that one of her co-stars is the always great Dan Stevens as the sinisterly handsome Herr Konig. But it’s Schafer who drags the film over the finish line as Gretchen finds strength and love within herself she never knew she had.
Set in the Bavarian Alps, Singer’s script methodically begins laying the groundwork for an unsettling serenity. Gretchen’s step-mom Beth (Jessica Henwick) and her father Luis (Marton Csokas) have been hired to build a new hotel for Konig. Gretchen is grieving the loss of her birth Mom while struggling to fit in with her new step-family, including a little half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu), who doesn’t talk.
However, the script is the thing that almost sinks Cuckoo. Singer can’t let the mysterious goings on in the resort town well enough alone. To the point that as we enter the final leg of the movie Stevens has the unenviable job of trying to explain the bizarre incidents and gory murders. Except, the script fails to understand how much is too much or how little is too little. In trying to explain everything Cuckoo is in very real danger of grinding to a halt.
At least it would be if not for Schafer’s morose and evocative emotional journey. Much in the same way Sydney Sweeney made Immaculate a must-see, Schafer does the same for Cuckoo. Like a flame that refuses to go out, she burns through every moment in Cuckoo, sometimes feeling as if she’s about to be extinguished with one breath while others feeling like she’s going to burn it all down.
The scenes between Schafer and Stevens are some of the best. Stevens doing his trademark passive-aggressive evil schtick makes for some giddily squirmy scenes. The way he intentionally mispronounces Gretchen’s name hints at perhaps what Singer is trying to get at about identity.
At its core, Cuckoo seems to be trying to scratch at something about the roles we play in a family both biological and performative. The way that Csokas’s Luis is Gretchen’s father but feels coldly distant. Or how Henwick’s Beth doesn’t seem to care all that much about Gretchen but dotes on Alma. Gretchen struggles to belong to her new family while also seeming to feel like a stranger in her own skin; feeling less like a daughter and more like a burden.
Singer’s script has all the pieces arranged on the board but once he starts to explain the logic behind everything he loses the thread. The notions of these themes about identity and the roles people find themselves cast in are right there. But Singer, despite his visual prowess in terms of using nature and the brutalist architecture of the resort to create an innate clash of style and sensibility obliterates it all by trying to make sense.
Even the humor, which should act like a relief valve for a film like Cuckoo feels forced. Schafer’s Gretchen has a moment when she interrogates Stevens’s Konig in front of her family. All the while Simon Waskow’s unnerving score threatens to overwhelm the moment. Stevens’s answer is glib yet weirdly poetic prompting Gretchen to shriek, “That’s a weird way to say that!” Except, the slight meta-commentary pulled me out of the movie if only because it felt so out of place. Singer’s script never feels as if it commits to its Lynchian-inspired vibe, instead hedging its bets and over-explaining events no one wanted to be explained.
The lensing by Paul Faltz blends the isolation and majestic beauty of the impenetrable mountain forestry. The kind of landscape that tickles the subconsciousness and tricks the mind into misbehaving. Like a Rorschach test, the dense woods can either inspire a sense of wonder or of eerieness.
One of the things I loved about Cuckoo was the little flourishes of innate understanding of how being alone in the dark can feel. Early on Faltz and Singer have moments where characters realize their shadows are behaving strangely, or maybe it’s a trick of the light. One scene has Schafer’s Gretchen riding her bike on a country road at night, the street lamps coasting strange shadow figures in the pavement that are almost hypnotic.
Back when I lived in Missouri, I would drive home at night, on old backroads, the headlights bouncing off the blanket of darkness. A few times I would meet a cow in the middle of the road, the headlights making its eyes glow red, long before the cow itself became illuminated. I mention this because I admire how Cuckoo seems to aim to capture these moments, and not play them as cheap jump scares. But films rarely recognize these small moments anymore, moments every one of us has felt in some way or another, because it has nothing to do with fan service.
But Cuckoo loses all this goodwill as it tries to make sense of things. If Singer had left well enough alone then we could have sat and argued about what Cuckoo really meant all the way home. Instead, Cuckoo has to make sure we’re not confused and in the process leaves us utterly baffled.
It doesn’t help that the monster in Cuckoo works best when we only see glimpses of it. While shrouded in the shadow of the night it conjures a feeling of unearthly terror. But by bringing it into the light, and allowing us to see it clearly, it ceases to be the stuff of nightmares and becomes a lady in a wig with funny glasses on.
Cuckoo starts off slow but eventually begins to pick up speed. We meet Henry (Jan Bluthhardt) a detective who feels as if he’s not being entirely truthful. As if he knows more than he’s letting on. The most fascinating character though is the cooly beautiful Ed (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). Gretchen and Ed spark an instant connection with each other, each of them drawn to the other. I would have gladly traded pointless exposition for more scenes with Gretchen and Ed gazing at each other with a longing that feels combustible.
A pity Singer does so little with it. The relationship between Ed and Gretchen could have emboldened the themes of identity and feeling of otherness hinted at in the bones of Cuckoo. But instead of being a horror movie with a story it tries to have a plot during the final reel and almost jumps off the tracks. Or it would, if not for Schafer’s dynamic engrossing performance.
Images courtesy of Neon
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