Cuck­oo review – nev­er quite takes flight

The cuck­oo is a dis­tinc­tive bird – it has a melod­ic call from which its name is derived, but more infa­mous is the species’ modus operan­di, where­by they lay their eggs in the nest of oth­er birds, who unsus­pect­ing­ly raise the cuck­oo chicks as their own, at the expense of their bio­log­i­cal off­spring. This unique trait makes the cuck­oo – by nature – a cru­el crea­ture, ripe for pop cul­ture trans­for­ma­tion into some­thing more sin­is­ter than a small par­a­sitic avian species.

This occurs in Tilman Singer’s sopho­more fea­ture, in which 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), still griev­ing the recent death of her moth­er, is forced to relo­cate with her father Luis (Mar­ton Csokas), step-moth­er Beth (Jes­si­ca Hen­wick) and mute half-sis­ter Alma (Mila Lieu) to a remote resort in the Alps, where Luis and Beth are over­see­ing the con­struc­tion of a new build­ing. The fam­i­ly are warm­ly greet­ed by the resort’s cheer­ful­ly sin­is­ter own­er Herr König (Dan Stevens rel­ish­ing anoth­er chance to get weird) but Gretchen is less than enthused about the prospect of being stuck in a new coun­try with her pre­vi­ous­ly estranged father.

On top of her per­son­al upheaval, Gretchen has the sense that some­thing strange is going on at Alp­shät­ten. She is pur­sued by an odd woman at night, one of the resort’s guests starts act­ing bizarrely, and Alma lash­es out at her after hav­ing an unex­pect­ed seizure. A chance meet­ing with French femme fatale Ed (Astrid Bergès-Fris­bey) sees Gretchen impul­sive­ly attempt to run away – things only get worse from there, as a gruff detec­tive starts sniff­ing around and the extent of Herr König’s qua­si-ornitho­log­i­cal inter­ests becomes apparent.

While Hunter Schafer makes for a great Final Girl and Dan Stevens is on top form lean­ing into his knack for play­ing off­putting weirdos, Cuck­oo suf­fers from an ambi­gu­i­ty that hin­ders the sto­ry, unable to rec­on­cile the comedic ele­ments of the plot with the unset­tling. There’s also a tonal clash between the grainy, ​’70s cin­e­matog­ra­phy and the con­tem­po­rary set­ting, which empha­sis­es the awk­ward mix of ideas which don’t gel togeth­er sat­is­fy­ing­ly. After estab­lish­ing an unset­tling slow burn, Singer has to deliv­er a slew of con­fus­ing expo­si­tion in the film’s final half-hour which doesn’t real­ly explain the par­tic­u­lars of the super­nat­ur­al crea­tures we’ve spent the past hour being warned about.

While it’s very much pos­si­ble to cre­ate an effec­tive hor­ror film with­out invest­ing too much in lore, Cuck­oo does feel like it would have ben­e­fit­ted from giv­ing us more of an idea as to what exact­ly the pur­pose of Herr König’s sin­is­ter ​‘breed­ing pro­gramme’ is. There’s some gen­er­al hand-wav­ing about his keen inter­est in con­ser­va­tion, but the script cre­ates more ques­tions than answers in a mat­ter that ulti­mate­ly feels unsat­is­fy­ing rather than unnerving.

Still, Singer is a won­der­ful­ly imag­i­na­tive film­mak­er, pay­ing homage to giants of the genre world includ­ing The Wick­er Man, Rosemary’s Baby and Vil­lage of the Damned. It’s a thought­ful­ly pro­duced film, but one that lacks on the sto­ry front, as fun as some of the more bizarro moments are.