Producers: Markus Halberschmidt, Josh Rosenbaum, Maria Tsigka, Ken Kao, Thor Bradwell and Ben Rimmer Director: Tilman Singer Screenplay: Tilman Singer Cast: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Márton Csókás, Jan Bluthardt, Mila Lieu, Greta Fernández, Proschat Madani, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Konrad Singer and Kalin Morrow Distributor: Neon
Grade: C+
Tilman Singer’s darkly comic horror thriller lives up to its title in one respect—it’s absolutely bonkers, with a performance by Dan Stevens as Herr König, a serpentine German mad scientist tooting on a Pied-Piper-like recorder, that represents a master class in chewing the scenery while pretending to underplay.
König has his malevolent eye on Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), an American teen who arrives at König’s resort in the Bavarian Alps with her father Luis (Márton Csókás), his new wife Beth (Jessica Henwick) and her younger half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu); Luis and Beth have been hired to design an addition to the place. In her more despondent moments Gretchen calls her mother’s answering-machine, begging to come home; the fact that mom never picks up or answers is a pretty clear signal as to why the girl is so down. König also shows an interest in Alma, a mute adolescent given to seizures.
König suggests that Gretchen might fill her free time by assisting Beatrix (Greta Fernández), the resort receptionist, at the front desk, and she agrees, though she prefers riding her bike to and from work rather than agreeing to König’s insistence that he pick her up because the road is perilous after dark. Gretchen finds that his warning is understandable when she’s stalked by a hooded woman (Kalin Morrow), who pursues her while emitting a screech that sounds like a banshee’s cry as the girl is peddling home.
The injury she receives while trying frantically to get into the family’s modernist home is dismissed by cop Erik (Konrad Singer ), Beatrix’s boyfriend, but leads to Gretchen’s admittance to the clinic run by König’s ally Dr. Bonomo (Proschat Madani), whom he’s introduced as a specialist in chronic disease, where she finds that Alma’s also been brought after a seizure.
Gretchen’s patched up and goes back to work, where strangely friendly, dark-haired guest Ed (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) is taken aback by something the girl has already noticed–the propensity of others, all females—to throw up while walking the grounds. When she checks out the next day, she offers to take Gretchen with her, but as they drive along the hooded woman appears and causes them to crash.
Returned to the hospital with serious injuries, Gretchen is again accosted by Henry Landau (Jan Bluthardt), a detective who’d approached her earlier at the resort for help in finding out what happened to his wife there. He’s instrumental in uncovering what König is up to—a plot that involves multiple close-ups of throbbing larynxes, a swarm of shrieking young women under the control of König’s recorder, and the scientist’s desire to apply the cuckoo’s strange practice of “brood parasitism” to another species, creating what’s referred to as “homo cuculidae.”
If one tries to make sense of all this, the effort will result in exasperation. Nor is one likely to find the big finale, in which the hooded woman, who might be someone Gretchen knows, reappears while Landau and König face off against one another and the two sisters bond as they attempt to escape the mayhem, any less confusing.
On the positive side, “Cuckoo” isn’t boring. On the other hand, it’s as silly as its central conceit. It does benefit from Stevens’ silkily unnerving performance, and from the commitment Schafer brings to the nervously heroic Gretchen. And while the rest of the cast merely goes through the motions, Singer’s crew—production designer Dario Mendez Acosta, costumer Frauke Firl and cinematographer Paul Faltz—indulge in some striking visuals, while editors Terel Gibson and Philipp Thomas contribute some creepy if inexplicable touches, like sequences that replay actions in a kind of jagged loop, suggesting a fracturing of time. A creepy sound design by Jeff Pits, Odin Benitez, Jonas Lux, Steffen Pfauth and Torsten Zumhof, including the weird sounds emitted by the hooded woman and the brood of König’s “guests,” adds to the macabre atmosphere, clashing with the brooding score by Simon Waskow that’s frequently interrupted by the raucous heavy pop that Gretchen listens to over her headphones.
Ultimately “Cuckoo” proves a combination of elements that are more effective individually than as a whole, and by the close it collapses into a farrago that’s neither scary nor funny. But for genre devotees it has tasty moments along the way.