Cuckoo a stylish nightmare with a wonderfully sinister Dan Stevens
Let’s get one thing out of the way: I did not entirely understand everything that happens in Cuckoo, an indie horror now available for pre-order on iTunes.
This could be more of a me problem than with the storytelling, but there are a lot of strange things happening at this Alpine resort. It’s run by a bespectacled German hotelier named Herr König, played with an off-kilter menace by Dan Stevens.
Some of the occurrences are underexplained, others underexplored. Herr König seems particularly worried about things that happen after dark, but not so much about guests wandering into the reception and general store in a wobbly stupor and vomit. Are they drunk? Sick? Should someone help them? All we get is: “It happens.” The hospital, too, is eerily empty. Sonic vibrations often ripple
through the land, causing scenes to repeat until reaching a violent crescendo. And no one seems to listen to or care about anything 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) has to say, no matter how banged up she gets. The quick escalation of her injuries, and the widening disinterest of her father, approaches comedy.
Ambiguity can be great for mystery and worldbuilding; It can also be frustrating. And more often than not, detailed explanations just make everything lamer. Cuckoo dips into all of the above. Even so, it is undeniably fascinating, original and even fun, in a very twisted and deranged way in which laughter is your involuntary response to something horrifying. In her captivating lead performance, Schafer really goes through it, both physically and emotionally.
It also features Stevens sporting tiny, rimless glasses with sinisterly scandi-cool monochrome outfits, and a screaming ghoul with Hitchcockian glamour in a hooded trench and white-framed oval sunnies. Rarely is it a bad idea for a horror film to lean into style, and Cuckoo fully commits.
Cuckoo is the brainchild of German director Tilman Singer, but credit also goes to Singer’s predecessors: The works of
David Lynch and Dario Argento among them. Gretchen is a reluctant resident in the idyllic, modern home with her father (Martin Csokas), stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). She leaves increasingly desperate messages on her mother’s answering machine in America.
It’s certainly an exaggerated but apt portrait of a new family where the remnants of the old are treated like a nuisance. When Alma starts having seizures during the vibrations, which no one but Gretchen seems to remember or acknowledge, the parents’ attention turns fully to the young girl. They can barely be bothered to care about Gretchen’s miraculous survival of a horrifying car wreck; Alma is in the same hospital because of the episodes.
As with many horrors, the big reveals were, for this critic, a little underwhelming — a strained attempt at a unifying theory for this weird place that doesn’t add much ultimately. And yet the emotional connection to Gretchen and her complex relationship with Alma does pay off in unexpected ways.
Also, Stevens deserves special acknowledgment for his contributions to Cuckoo. This is a man who could have easily languished in blandly handsome leading man roles and instead is becoming one of our great character actors. He is regularly the best and most memorable part of whatever he’s in just by his sheer commitment to going there, whether it’s his Hawaiian shirt wearing titan veterinarian in Godzilla x Kong, his Russian pop star in Eurovision or any number of his deranged horror characters. He and Schafer, always a compelling presence, make Cuckoo very much worth it. They exist far too comfortably in this dreamy, nightmarish world dreamt up by Singer that is well worth a watch.