Cuckoo

One of the most bizarre viewing experiences of the year so far is director Tilman Singer’s long-awaited return after his 2018 single location horror Luz. Operating on a much bigger budget, Cuckoo stars international talent such as Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick and Marton Csokas.

Circumstances force Gretchen (Schafer) to relocate to Europe and join her father’s new family on their move from England to the Bavarian Alps. Because her goal is to return to the United States as soon as possible, she agrees to the first job opportunity that comes her way: manning reception of the resort owned by her father’s friend, the mysterious “Herr König” (Dan Stevens). Despite clashes with her co-worker’s shift, König insists Gretchen only work during the day and she soon realises strange apparitions in the woods may have something to do with it.

Throughout the film, there is an accumulation of details that feel off but as the setting is a place where strange things happen, one can’t immediately tell whether these are on purpose to flesh out the world-building, or if they are goofs from the production side of it. By contrast, the amount of thought that has gone into the blocking and framing of shots is evident and admirable. Individual images have almost a Hitchcockian quality in their use of lighting techniques and permitting action to happen in the shadows.

The stiff direction of the acting is what reveals this to be a German production, even though it takes some scrolling down the cast list to spot the first native actors. For the majority of its 102-minute runtime, the spoken language is English. Dan Stevens already proved his German proficiency in Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man, but one could argue that it is a greater challenge to realistically portray a different nationality while speaking your mother tongue, and Stevens really goes the extra mile here, not only perfecting accent and intonation but also adding little mistakes as if he had been too literal in his translation of a German expression. Stevens put in the work, then showed up to set to have fun with the assignment. However, it seems as though he might have been a minority as many of the other performances reflect the quality of the material they were given.

Cuckoo’s main problem lies in its script: it feels like Singer wanted to adapt a Jean-Christophe Grangé novel, but couldn’t decide which, so he merged plot points and tropes of his favourite ones, without implementing them into a consistent story. This is most evident in the mystery elements, which are only partially resolved – but not even the family drama is entirely coherent. An early scene establishes the reason for Gretchen having to come live with her father, however at a later stage in the film, unfathomably this is treated as if it were a big reveal.

While the end result unfortunately falls flat, it is still laudable that a genre film was given the opportunity to operate on this scale and hopefully, we get to see more risky projects like this in the future!

Selina Sondermann

Cuckoo is released nationwide on 23^rd August 2024.

Watch the trailer for Cuckoo here: