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Critics’ Choice
Dan Stevens and Hunter Schafer go head-to-head in this strangely funny and undeniably far-fetched horror comedy about cross-species pollination.
By Jeannette Catsoulis
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“This is normal?” asks a speechless hotel guest in “Cuckoo” after seeing another guest stagger and vomit in the lobby. Viewers might ask the same question about a film whose name can reveal as much about its director’s sensibilities as he does. about the nature of its plot.
Gifted with a singular and inexplicable vision, German filmmaker Tilman Singer demonstrates once again – after his first experimental album, “Luz” (2019) – that he is more attracted to sensation than meaning. Freed from logic, his paintings dance on the border between the captivating and the confusing, the exciting and the annoying. Taking several steps closer to a relatable plot, “Cuckoo” revolves around Gretchen (a perfect Hunter Schafer), a grieving and volatile 17-year-old woman whose mother has died and whose father (Marton Csokas) has brought her to live with her new circle of friends. relatives in a hotel in the Bavarian Alps.
As soon as it arrives, nothing turns out to be right. Missing her mother and her life in United States, Gretchen is slow to connect with her colorful stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and her much younger half-sister, Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute and suffers from unexplained seizures. Gretchen’s concern is compounded by the resort’s delicate owner, Herr König (Dan Stevens), who is strangely obsessed with Alma. Strange screams fill the forest and a terrifying figure dressed in white seems to stalk Gretchen as she walks home from her homework at the resort’s reception. Maybe the razor we saw in its unboxing is convenient after all.
A tale of human-bird experimentation with spooky trappings, “Cuckoo” is unsubtle and unbalanced. The narrative may be confusing, but the atmosphere is a spectacle of natural phenomena and Stevens, thank goodness, quickly grasps the comic possibilities of the film’s themes and the madness of his character. Reprising his impeccable German accessory from the captivating 2021 sci-fi romance “I’m Your Man,” he presents a seductive and creepy König who is less of a mad scientist and more of a sexy ornithologist. Obsessed with the idea of replicating – in an indescribable way – the reproductive behaviors of the titular bird, König wants the cooperation of young volunteers. Gretchen doesn’t need to become one of them.
Shooting on a 35-millimeter film, Paul Faltz, supported by Simon Waskow’s plaintive and agitated score, analyzes the surreality of Gretchen’s trapped situation 22 with close-ups. The ears tremble and twitch in reaction to mysterious calls; the throat palpitates with an immediate and broken pulse; Viscous secretions are passed from one woman to another. And as the season’s risks become more pronounced and Gretchen’s wounds multiply, the film’s insane body horror ambitions become the means through which she will triumph over her pain and heal her emotional dislocation.
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