Cuckoo
After her mother’s death, 17 year-old Gretchen ('Euphoria's' Hunter Schafer) isn’t happy about moving to an Alpine resort in Germany to live with her father, his second wife Beth (Jessica Henwick, "Glass Onion," "The Royal Hotel") and their mute 8 year-old daughter Alma (Mila Lieu), but things become more alarming when she begins to suspect his boss, Herr König (Dan Stevens, "Abigail"), is “Cuckoo.”
Laura's Review: C+
As he did with his first film, “Luz,” writer/director Tilman Singer evinces a knack for putting together unnerving scenes with technical craft but ineptness when it comes to a cohesive, in this case even compelling, narrative. Hunter Schafer proves her ability to shoulder a film with an all-in performance covering grief, betrayal, attraction, fear and compassion with a physicality that makes her a believable threat, even when seriously injured, but once König’s operation is revealed for what it is, “Cuckoo” loses most of its momentum. There is no logical or behavioral explanation for any of it, despite Singer’s thematic attempts to link it to his heroine’s status.
Singer’s opening flourish is steeped in German Expressionism, a young teenaged girl (Matthea Lára Pedersen) quaking unnaturally in her nightgown as oversized shadows on a stairway represent the arguing adults upstairs. Her ears twitch, like an alert animal’s, and she bounds off into the forest.
We’ll meet a glum looking Gretchen slumped against the door as her dad Luis (Márton Csókás, "Chevalier") drives through the Alps towards the old fashioned resort he and Beth have been hired to rebuild, the couple having spent their honeymoon there eight years earlier. Gretchen’s an awkward outsider and König’s obsequious welcome doesn’t lift her spirits. On top of that, she’s no sooner out of the car and using a public bathroom in the lobby when she’s threatened by an unseen obtruder who enters the stall next to hers. In her room, she’ll call her mom, whose voice on their old answering machine provides comfort, stating that she is determined to come home.
Gretchen, who’s usually found wearing headphones or earbuds while listening or creating music, is interrupted by Alma as she plays bass, only to experience a strange interlude where everything shimmies and the immediate events of the past seconds repeat on a loop, a weird experience that will recur throughout the film (with absolutely no logical purpose). Alma, who Gretchen refuses to call her sister, reacts by attacking, scratching Gretchen’s face, the first of several injuries she will rack up over the next couple days.
But when she resists König’s attempt to give her a ride home from the job he’s given her at his front desk after a disoriented female guest vomited in the lobby, the second time that’s happened, she’ll be chased on her bike, then attacked by a strange, hooded, howling woman (Kalin Morrow). Trouble is, no one believes her, local policeman Erik (Konrad Singer) dismissing it as a prank while Luis and Beth are totally absorbed by Alma’s sudden seizures, the girl now in hospital under König collaborator Dr. Bonomo’s (Proschat Madani) care.
There will be a runaway attempt with the French hotel guest (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, "I, Origins") who suggests Gretchen go to Paris that ends in a horrific accident and a partner-in-crime in Henry Landau (Jan Bluthardt, "Luz"), who claims to be a police inspector and discovers something strange in the resort’s pink ‘couples’ bungalow. But then Gretchen trusts König to give her a ride to the station, his keychain points to the film’s ludicrous underpinnings.
Perhaps inspired by the Bavarian cuckoo clock that cameos here, Singer has come up with a cockamamie plot about a self-styled ‘preservationist’ who is obsessed with creating something that just makes no sense, no matter how one tries to connect changelings or orphans to the plot. Stevens, who gets to show off his German again after “I’m Your Man,” appears to be having a good time, but he’s not menacing enough to instill any real fear, the film’s climax nothing but a good old-fashioned shoot out. This is Schafer’s film, and her third act heroism towards Alma almost puts her in Ripley’s realm. (Speaking of Alma, why does everyone sign to a girl who is not deaf but mute?)
Singer clearly has talent, but he needs a screenplay collaborator to hone his ideas. As stated before, the film is well crafted, Gretchen’s nighttime bicycle ride down a road through the mountains eerie and suspenseful. Musical selections add to a creepy atmosphere that never really delivers on its promise (Singer also wrote and performs the song 'First Blood').
Neon releases "Cuckoo" in theaters on 8/9/24.
