Cuckoo (2024) - Review: Call and Response

 

There are few horror tropes as time-honored as simply placing a troubled teen in the middle of a wooded European country and letting all hell break loose on them. It creates easy fears within the forests, unsettling atmospheres from the foreign locations, and allows for a young actor to go for broke in an unhinged lead performance. And if you want all of that and not much else, then “Cuckoo” is the movie for you. 

The film follows teenaged Gretchen, played by Hunter Schaffer (“euphoria,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”), who moves with her father Luis, played by Marton Csokas (“The Equalizer,” “Into the Badlands”), his new wife Beth, played by Jessica Henwick (“The Matrix Resurrections,” “Iron Fist”), and her stepsister Alma, played by Mila Lieu, to the German Alps to live in a resort town while they assist the manager Herr König, played by Dan Stevens (“Legion,” “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire”), in designing a new resort. While there, Gretchen soon finds herself seemingly hunted by a mysterious woman and is enlisted by police detective Henry, played by Jan Bluthardt (“Luz”), in finding the woman. 

First things first, in a film filled with insane moments and revelations, Schaffer is the absolute queen of it all. She commands the screen and throws herself into the role, unafraid to come across as arrogant or selfish. It’s a commendable kind of performance, one where the actor is letting themselves be completely demolished during the course of the adventure. Schaffer is able to connect with the audience and ground this fantastical tale with a real sense of emotion and exasperation in a way that actively makes the movie better. 

However, the rest of the cast rides the line between under and overplayed with seemingly reckless abandon. Csokas, Henwick, and Lieu are fairly underplayed given their roles in the story. Meanwhile, Stevens and Bluthardt go above and beyond, entering the realm of camp in a way that only somewhat meshes with the rest of the film. The dissonance between their performances works as a metaphor for one of the film’s main issues as well. 

As crazed as the tale can be, there’s a lack of commitment on display that makes is a somewhat confusing affair. You’d expect a tale like this to be over the top or campy, but it all plays things rather straight. Apart from Stevens and Bluthardt’s performances, writer/director Tilman Singer (“Luz”) plays everything fairly straight, instead of divulging into the campy weirdness most would associate with a story like this. There are certainly plenty of twists and turns, and the scares are constructed in a fantastic way, but it's not the kind of over-the-top weirdo horror many might think based on the marketing. 

Thankfully, regardless of how it's constructed or performed, the film itself is a gorgeous tableau. Shot by cinematographer Paul Faltz (“Luz,” “Intermezzo”), there’s a fantastic construction of fabricated sets and gorgeous German woodlands and mountainsides. Faltz and Singer have fantastic eyes for their horrific events and the musical score from Simon Waskow (“Luz”) keeps things underscored with a delightfully playful bit of music matching the events on screen. Singer also keeps things fresh with some creative bits of editing, including a fantastic repeating element that further adds to the weirdness on display. 

“Cuckoo” is certainly that, but it’s a bit too strait laced to fully transcend into the bonkers horror-creature-feature it likely wants to be. The uneven performances are all anchored by Schaffer’s commanding lead role, and the technical aspects of the film, as well as its general weirdness will certainly be enough for genre fans seeking a scary and bizarre night at the movies. Though some will absolutely wish it got weirder. 3.5/5