15/04/2024 - In Tilman Singer’s eccentric second feature, Hunter Schafer is a mopey teen in a hotel resort of horrors

Hunter Schafer in Cuckoo

The title Cuckoo [+see also:
trailer
film profile]… Is that, by any chance, this film offering itself a self-review? Equally wanting us to follow its labyrinthine plot, question the shakiness of its construction and just submit to sheer confusion, this sophomore effort from German director Tilman Singer is a confident nesting of classic horror tropes, with a side of Zoomer-age melancholy. Its cast, headed by Hunter Schafer, of Euphoria fame, and Dan Stevens, is fairly prestigious, yet this film is pleasingly not, baying for the multiplex, rather than the arthouse venue, although it’s ultimately quite a flawed effort: a cuckoo clock with faulty cogs. It premiered in February as a Berlinale Special screening; last week, it showed as part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s spring Next Wave showcase.

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Complying with the now-expected behaviours of horror characters that have apparently never seen an example of the film they’re in, late-teen aspirant musician Gretchen (Schafer) is ferried by her architect father Luis (Márton Csóskas) and step-mum Beth (Jessica Henwick) – along with her mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) – to an Alpine resort unnerving in both low temperature and general atmosphere. It’s presided over by the clearly diabolical Herr König (Dan Stevens, putting on an accent and savouring every hard consonant sound), for whom Luis is leading a redesign and refurbishment effort. But wait: in the film’s scariest detail, Alma (and later other characters) starts emitting a high-pitched screeching sound that sends the audio mix careering into the red, accompanied by the previous seconds of time woozily slowing down and inverting. Clearly related to this, König himself is constantly inclined to whip out a thin panpipe, tooting a pert little melody; is there a character coded “good” in these movies who’d ever consider doing the same?

The plot then scatters more and more breadcrumbs, which play increasingly like a pile-up of non sequiturs that never risk aligning themselves into sense. With Gretchen reluctantly taking a summer job in the hotel reception, an incredibly athletic woman in cat-eye sunglasses starts menacing and pursuing her. A baroque backstory reveals itself from this moment of peril, as the events trip into bio- and natal horror – and the ornithological parallels of the title come to the fore – with König a mad scientist figure struggling to conceal his depraved endgame. As the viewer tracks the narrative arc, the elusive character motivations promise and ultimately deny unveiling further information, and not helped by a fatiguing James Cameron-esque hallway shootout climax, we’re left nursing the contradiction of an exposition-heavy film which still demands more of that at its close, or less to start with.

Luz [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Singer’s previous feature (which was shown in Berlin’s now-scrapped Perspektive Deutsches Kino strand), stoked anticipation for his future career, its queasy imagery and storytelling conjuring a dream logic akin to the Belgian art-horror duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Cuckoo is equally festival-friendly, and more star-driven with what will surely be the first of Schafer’s many film bows, yet it’s anything but “elevated”, and its fun and intrigue abruptly surface and provoke our senses, like a rare bird call, before dissipating, never to be found again.

Cuckoo is a production of Germany and the USA, staged by Fiction Park and Waypoint Entertainment. Its world sales are handled by Sierra/Affinity.

Photogallery 17/02/2024: Berlinale 2024 - Cuckoo

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Hunter Schafer, Jessica Henwick, Tilman Singer, Marton Csokas
© 2024 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - dario-caruso.fr, @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso