Cuckoo (2024)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Tricky Birds

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Tilman Singer's bonkers horror movie Cuckoo both over-explains its plot and leaves it undercooked, never quite sure where it's headed, but its eerie atmosphere and committed characters make it worth a viewing.

Seventeen-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) moves with her father Luis (Márton Csókás), Luis's new wife Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their daughter — Gretchen's half-sister — Alma (Mila Lieu), to a resort in the Bavarian Alps in Germany. The resort is run by Herr König (Dan Stevens), who has hired Luis to create plans for a new resort. Alma doesn't speak and is prone to seizures, and, as a result, Gretchen doesn't get much attention.

She takes a job working the reception desk at the hotel and notices weird things, including a woman vomiting on the floor. At night, she's chased by a strange woman in sunglasses and winds up in the hospital with stitches in her head. When she tries to run away with one of the hotel's patrons (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey), things go south, and she stumbles upon the real reason she and her family are there.

Directed by German-born Singer, whose debut feature was the extremely strange, experimental Luz, Cuckoo is certainly more geared for mainstream horror audiences, although it also has its own touches of the bizarre. The story's secret experiment is meant to recall Nazi atrocities — Dan Stevens gives a note-perfect performance as the polite but sinister German villain — even if his plan doesn't quite seem totally worked out. It's never clear who is on what side or for what reason.

But Hunter Schafer, a trans performer best known for her work on Euphoria, is a serious tough girl, taking more physical damage than any movie hero since perhaps John McClane in the Die Hard movies. Her Gretchen is wounded and aching, but bristles like a porcupine at any sign of danger. (She carries a butterfly knife that she whips into readiness with expert precision.)

Director Singer makes clever use of space and sound, shadow and light, angles and corners, to emphasize the creepy factor, and things feel gleefully unsettling for a long time, at least until the plot kicks in. Cuckoo may not reach master-class levels of horror, but it clocks in and shows up.