Part of the fun of being a horror fan is learning which studios serve as shorthand for certain types of horror. In the case of NEON – the independent distributor behind movies like The Lodge and Infinity Pool – audiences have come to expect big concepts and a slight apathy towards mass-market accessibility. So perhaps it’s enough for some viewers to say that Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo is the latest high-profile release from NEON. If you’ve been paying attention, that might be a more immediate hook than any synopsis or blurb.
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When some parents remarry, their kids must acclimate to different houses. For Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a new family means a brand new continent. Gretchen’s new home is the German Alps, where her father and step-mother have agreed to work with an eccentric socialite on the development of his mountainside resort. That socialite is none other than Herr König (Dan Stevens), a self-styled conservationist who has built his resort as a celebration of young love – they even offer point-of-sale discounts to young lovers and newlyweds.
But one night, as she rides her bike back from her part-time gig at the resort’s front desk, Gretchen is attacked by a strange woman – a woman whose guttural screams and bird-like movements seem like nothing of this world. The more Gretchen protests that there is something evil lurking in the woods around the resort, the more König and others play off her concerns. But Gretchen is nothing if not tenacious, and before long, she will uncover exactly what kind of “conservationist” König fancies himself to be.
It’s often said that the key to creativity is taking familiar concepts and mashing them together in unfamiliar ways. In the case of Cuckoo, this approach combines elements of period German cinema – the muted greens of the forest that borders the compound, the mid-century touches of the production design – with narrative elements lifted from European folklore. As we learn more about the purpose of Herr König’s institute, the film reveals itself as a twist on the changeling mythos, echoing the uncanny facsimiles of humans found in movies like Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground.
If most creature features return to literature and urban legends for their inspiration, the titular creation in Cuckoo feels like something entirely new. There is a fine line to walk here – Cuckoo saves most of its lore for its climax, and describing the mythos behind the monster would drain much of the movie of its unsettling power. Singer works overtime to withhold information, introducing filmic concepts – disruptions in the film’s edit that will not be fully explained until later – that require audiences to give themselves over to the journey.
But it helps to know that Cuckoo is a creature feature, and to let that knowledge serve as a placeholder for the elements of the film that may not make sense in real-time. Trust in Singer; he knows what he’s doing.
What holds these disparate elements together is the push-pull of the movie’s two central performances. You would never guess that Cuckoo is Hunter Schafer’s first leading role in a horror movie. In Gretchen, the actress strikes a confident balance between fear and incredulity, weaving together a handful of disparate script elements into a bloody and battered posture of teenage rebellion. Cuckoo is not not a movie about reproductive health, and Schafer perfectly conveys the helplessness and frustration of having decisions about your life made by others, an attitude captured just right in the movie’s best line (“That’s a fucking weird way to put it!”).
Then there’s Dan Stevens. Others have put it best: every appearance of Stevens in this film is a jump scare – if not for the audience, then for Gretchen and the other characters moving through his resort. Think of König as a folkloric John Hammond, a man of immense power and influence who – despite his kindly appearance – attempts to wrestle a primordial force of nature into man’s world. The results are as-expected, but half the fun of the movie is watching the implacable König lose his cool. Dan Stevens remains, with love, one of our great Hollywood weirdos, and Cuckoo and Abigail offer horror fans an abundance of his riches.
For those who like their horror to be slippery – full of ideas that do not fit neatly into one box or genre label – Cuckoo will be one of the highlights of the year. Singer’s film is jam-packed with big ideas, and the alchemy of the film is how well these concepts fuse together to create something singular and unique. In a year that has already seen some incredible horror releases, NEON is now running with two standout features – this and Oz Perkins’s Longlegs – in back-to-back months. I guess that makes NEON’s marketing team the song of the summer. [4/5]
