With a title like Cuckoo, out-there insanity is a must, and Tilman Singer’s sophom*ore feature mostly lives up to the bar it sets for itself. Energized by superb performances from Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, this gonzo body-horror thriller—in theaters Aug. 2—is a bewildering and gripping saga about reproduction, identity, and family that, at its finest, taps into a legitimately demented vein.
On a trip to a Bavarian Alps resort that will be their home for the summer, Luis (Marton Sco*kas), wife Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their mute child Alma (Mila Lieu) all drive together while Luis’ daughter from his first marriage, Gretchen (Schafer), rides in the moving van. As voicemails elucidate, Gretchen is a rock bassist whose band misses her and whose mother has just died, and she’s none too pleased to be the fourth wheel in a clan that she doesn’t consider her own—and which, to a significant degree, feels similarly about her.
Upon arrival, they’re greeted by the owner of this getaway, Mr. König (Stevens), whose smile is as precise and attractive as his neatly trimmed beard. From the get-go, he’s far too friendly to be trustworthy, although despite her wariness, Gretchen—bored and miserable in this enclave—nonetheless agrees to work for him at the hotel’s front desk.
Wearing a white tank top beneath her blue bomber jacket, and with spiky blonde locks that frame her sharp-featured face, Gretchen radiates combative attitude, and that’s before Cuckoo reveals that she’s always armed with a switchblade. At outset, however, she has few active adversaries, save for her dad Luis, whose focus is habitually on Alma, a cheery adolescent whose inability to speak results in treatment by Dr. Bonomo (Porschat Madani), the superintendent of a chronic disease center.
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Such domestic tension speaks to Gretchen’s fundamental outsider nature in her family and her new environs. When paired with later revelations about the nefarious business taking place at this resort, those dynamics cast the material as something of a trans parable, with Gretchen forced to survive a nightmare rooted in the nature of the self and paternity, and in questions of acceptance and belonging.
Still, if those ideas run beneath the surface of Cuckoo, Singer more overtly shouts out to David Cronenberg (in particular, The Brood) and his imitators with this baffling tale.
In its prologue, an anonymous girl spasms as downstairs adults squabble. In response, she exits the abode and, after standing in the doorway and unnaturally shaking (down to her trembling ear), she flees into the nocturnal forest. This perplexing sight looms over the action proper, and it seems related to Gretchen’s subsequent encounters at work with female guests who vomit in the lobby—an occurrence that Gretchen’s colleague Trixie (Greta Fernández) claims is commonplace.
One night on a bike ride home from the resort (against the wishes of König, who’d prefer to drive her), Gretchen is pursued by a terrifying woman who wears a long hooded jacket and whose eyes glow behind her glasses. More unnervingly, her gaping mouth emits a piercing, inhuman shriek that sounds like a bird as filtered through an amplifier. Gretchen escapes this mysterious figure, but the police don’t believe her, nor do her vexed parents.
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This is almost as strange as an earlier bedroom incident in which Alma twitched uncontrollably, the world began to vibrate, and recent events repeated themselves as if Gretchen were caught in a time loop, and it convinces the teen that it’s time to return to her American abode. In that cause, she’s aided by a female guest named Ed (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) with whom she shares sexual sparks. Unfortunately, malevolent forces aren’t interested in letting her go, and in the aftermath of an accident that leaves her bruised and battered, Gretchen sets about seeking answers, some of which come courtesy of Henry (Jan Bluthardt), a cop who enlists her in an investigation into König’s operation.
Numerous references to nests and birds pepper Cuckoo, such that Gretchen’s sling-encased arm resonates as a figurative broken wing. Even so, none of these clues spoil the surprises that Singer has in store. The key to König’s plan has to do with the cuckoo, a “brood parasite” which sometimes lays its eggs in other bird species’ nests so its offspring can be raised by those unlike itself.
König is a “preservationist” intent on upholding this practice in ways that are shocking and grotesque, not to mention a bit confounding. The script is frustratingly hazy on a few of its finer points, and while that lends the proceedings an unsettling deliriousness that’s in tune with Gretchen’s banged-up headspace, it also interferes with its chaotic finale.
Amidst this lunacy, Schafer inhabits Gretchen as a confident and defiant teenager who responds to rejection and torment with formidable ferocity. Building on her work on Euphoria and , the actress proves to be a charismatic lead whose toughness is offset by believable measures of vulnerability, hurt, and resentment, and she’s expertly paired opposite Stevens.
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Once again affecting an amusing accent and wielding his inherent charm for wicked purposes, the British actor is in fine menacing form as the deranged König, ladling on the friendliness as a means of masking his bonkers procreation-centric motives. He’s a baddie fit for a B-movie, and it’s occasionally disappointing that Singer doesn’t dive more fully into pulp, if only because Stevens appears so ready and willing to chew scenery.
Cuckoo isn’t completely sure about how seriously it wants to take itself, and that uncertainty is both the fuel for its volatile electricity and the barrier preventing it from indulging in genuine craziness. If caught between the goofy and the grim, however, the film manages to generate enough suspenseful unease to carry it through to the end, and it conjures at least one vision—of the hooded monster chasing after Gretchen, its arm outstretched and its eyes alight—designed to plague viewers’ dreams. Factor in Schafer and Stevens’ strong turns, and Singer’s film is one that genre fans would, on the whole, be mad to miss.
