I’m pretty sure this dude boinked a bird

Today we are looking at Cuckoo, the new film by German director Tilman Singer. Singer is best known for his 2018 film Luz. Luz didn’t get a major release in the United States but made enough of a buzz that when he started shopping his new script, Neon stepped up and gave him the production budget to bring this wild wacky horror movie to life.

Cuckoo stars Hunter Schafer, best known for her role on HBO’s Euphoria and she is an absolute scene stealer in this flick. The film follows Hunter Schafers Gretchen as she moves to a mysterious village in the Alps with her father, stepmother, and mute half-sister. Her father has taken a job to build a new villa at a mountain view resort and Gretchen’s relationship with every member of her family is best described as tumultuous. The hotel is run by a devilshy cast Dan Stevens who exudes creep the second he appears on screen. I won’t spoil any more of the plot because it is best to go in knowing nothing but the film takes some wild turns.

The name of the film is Cuckoo, which is a homonym for both a species of bird and something that is downright bonkers. Cuckoo the film, leans into both meanings harder than you may imagine. One thing I found most satisfying with Cuckoo is the imagery Singer uses throughout the film to portray his themes. The basic plot beats rely heavily on the lore and nature of the Cuckoo and that imagery is peppered throughout the entire film. Hunter Schafer embodies this vision of the bird, at one point breaking her wing, and running full tilt into glass doors on multiple occasions. Hunter even has very sharp facial features that are accentuated by her costuming in big bomber jackets and frumpy outfits. The imagery is subtle though. It’s not like Black Swan where Natalie Portman grows literal wings and feathers. Tilman Singer plays around with realism and formalism in such an interesting way that it’s truly unsettling when the bizarre starts to happen. A technique used flawlessly 44 years prior in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining.

Cuckoo pays homage to The Shining in a myriad of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Both of these films are set primarily in a large mountain-view hotel and deal with people losing their sanity. In The Shining, we see Jack Nicholson’s character, Jack Torrance, slowly lose his mind due to isolation. Cuckoo doesn’t mirror the plot, but it does take a lot of inspiration from the film. The sets here are so reminiscent of The Shining that at times you forget you are watching a movie set in the modern day. Gretchen occasionally uses a cell phone, but without that, you’d have no idea if this film took place in 2024 or 1974. All the vehicles shown are older models, the hotel is outdated with orange and brown accents covering the space, and it’s even littered with usable relics of the past like tape-recorded answering machines and payphones. Singer has placed us in a world where we aren’t sure what is the past and what is the present. The imagery is not just a nod to Kubrick’s masterpiece, it also keeps the audience constantly questioning what we see. We aren’t sure where we are if we’re in a normal world, an alternate one, or even what time period we’re in. This all blends masterfully as the plot reveals come slowly trickling in, giving us breadcrumbs bit by bit of what is truly going on at the strange hotel.

Tilman Singers’ eye for the camera also shines in some of the film’s tense moments. There is a wonderful scene early on, the first real jump scare of the film, where Gretchen is riding her bike home from the hotel at night on a long and creepy road. The camera shows us Gretchen in a closeup, then pans back to see a figure running incredibly fast behind her. After a few cuts to the figure running step by step with Gretchen, the camera moves behind Gretchen, centering the shot around the shadows of her bicycle as they move from the bottom of the screen to the top. It’s a haunting shot, giving the viewer the feeling of being chased, before finally we see the shadow of the haunting figure, moving in step with the bike’s shadow. Fully realizing Singers chase imagery.

As the story progresses, Hunter Schafers Gretchen begins to learn the truth about what is really going on at the hotel and how her family is involved. In broad strokes, the film is ultimately about preservation. Who or what is worthy of being preserved and who gets to decide what is worth preserving, and what is worth sacrificing for the sake of another’s preservation. It’s an interesting theme told in an even more interesting way. Cuckoo plays with perspective and imagery in a way rarely seen by such a young director. The script is also very strong. For a movie filled with mystery and crazy plot points, the film never leans on long exposition dumps. It more often than not follows the rule of show don’t tell, and even when it’s forced to provide some context through dialogue for the madness happening in the world, the film shows restraint and delivers these plot points at enough of a cadence that the audience is always able to follow the film but never feels overwhelmed. I’m giving Cuckoo a 9 and what a great year it’s been already for interesting horror movies.