Cuckoo: Twisted and unusual horror is none the less compelling.

⭐⭐⭐

Rob Ryan

2024 has been an exceptional year for horror. Just this year alone we've been graced with the insanity of Immaculate, the intricate and cryptic marketing of Longlegs, the gory minimalism of In a Violent Nature, the nightmare reality of I Saw the TV Glow and this is just some of the the stuff I've seen. Despite the duds including Night Swim, The Exorcism and The Watchers, it would appear that 2024 is the year where the horror genre is finally taken seriously again after a long decade of throwaway movies that only exist to be in a production line.

Now comes Cuckoo which is somewhat of an oddity in this list of movies previously mentioned. It's campy without being completely over the top and Its twisted without being scary. All of this makes for a strange but ultimately entertaining film. A big part of why the film works as well as it does is because Hunter Schafer puts 110% herself of into this movie and manages to elevate beyond the material, this is her first leading role in a feature film, she knocks it out of the park.

Schafer plays Gretchen, a young American band member who has to live with her estranged father (Marton Csokas) and his family in the German alps because (you guessed it) her mother has passed away. They arrive to a country resort that her dad and his wife (Jessica Henwick) spent their honeymoon in and have decided to permanently reside there along side their daughter Alma (Mila Lieu) with Gretchen reluctantly tagging along. They are greeted by the owner of the resort (a scene chewing Dan Stevens) who has one strict rule, no one goes out after 10.

Gretchen learns the hard way why that's the case and one night when riding back from a shift at the nearby hotel, is attacked by a loud screeching woman wearing sunglasses and a big coat, In the struggle she cuts her head open and the police conclude that she was "A victim of a prank". That's not all, Alma starts having wired seizures that begin when hearing Gretchen play her music, what dark secrets is this owner hiding and what does this have to do with poor Alma and her seizures?

The films biggest drawback is purely on the well edited trailer being 10 times more scary than the actual film, not least considering that the reveal of "the monster" is a disappointment despite the creative ways writer-director Tilman Singer plays with time when building up creatures kill scenes. You wonder why have such a slow build up to the full reveal, if it's gonna look as effective as someone doing Nicolas Cage as Longlegs cosplay? If there was more done to make the creature look as threatening as possible then it could have complimented the distorted feel of the whole movie even more.

But where it lacks in scares, it makes up for it in the subtle ways that the cast and the filmmakers subvert the genre and often flip it on its head. For example, I often complain of "the dead parent" plot device riddled in mainstream horror, or how anything to do grief and trauma feels like an afterthought, here this plot device actually feels purposeful and genuine, a lot of that has to do with Schafer's performance. The films best and most emotionally rewarding scene involves a confrontation, a funny self aware line about Steven's suspect demeanour leads to a dramatic reveal that manages to be a surprising gut punch. This plot point is not a front for some generic platitudes, we actually care about this character who is hurting big time and to add insult to injury, is stuck in a place that is completely alien to her.

Then there's the somewhat self awareness of the film, especially in the films supporting characters, this could have worked against it but actually gives the film a feel and tone that made it feel fresh. Dan Stevens as "Herr Konig" is the embodiment of the films cheesy tone, his thick German accent on top of his sinister evil villain smile and slimy line delivery are all in perfect contrast to Gretchen who resembles someone we know from real life. The same can be said for a cop investigating the disappearances surrounding the resort (Jan Bluthardt) who like Stevens feels like a walking cliché but the film seems to know it and have fun with it while being directed and acted as serious as possible. There's also a love interest who is seemingly everything resembling Gretchen's ideal woman, she loves music and wears a leather jacket, of course she's going to make out with her under a tree.

Cuckoo is a weird combination of camp, slasher, creature feature, exploitation and arthouse thriller. It's uneven but it swings for the fences, It kinda reminded me of Brian De Palma, how his films will often be very cheesy and almost self aware, but are told masterfully that you have no choice to keep watching, this isn't quite as good as those films but I was never bored. While I can't say this completely works as a horror film and the movie had the potential to go further with it's camp value, you kinda get a sense of a filmmaker that is still finding his footing but you still admire the attempt and what ended up being. Not a great horror movie but it's a fun and interesting one at that.