Cuckoo

After the death of her mother, seventeen-year-old Gretchen is forced to leave her life in America behind, and move in with her father and his new family at a resort in the German Alps. Isolated, alone, grieving, and plagued by strange noises and bloody visions, she soon begins to suspect that there is something very wrong going on at the resort, and that it’s threatening her family.

Set in an unclear time period that may or may not be the 90s, as there are answering machines with cassette tapes, and seemingly no cellphones, but could also just be a small mountain town in Europe, Cuckoo the movie hinges on the idea that cuckoos the birds lays their eggs in the nests of other birds, so that those birds will then raise their offspring for them, and those young cuckoos then grow strong by stealing precious resources from the nest owner’s own young hatchlings.

That's interesting, right? Sure. A little. Well, guess what? Writer/director Tilman Singer fucking loves this idea, saying in interviews…

“It’s really a freaky thing that that’s just in nature and birds are just out here being complete dicks to other birds and giving them their own babies to raise. Are you kidding? That’s psycho!”

The story opens with grieving teenager Gretchen, her benignly neglectful father Luis, her standoffish stepmother Beth, and her mute half-sister Alma, as they are moving to a resort town high in the Bavarian Alps. Gretchen is there because her mother has died and she’s still a minor, so she’s been packed up and shipped off to live with her father. The rest of family is there because they have been invited by the resort’s owner to help build a new hotel on the existing resort’s grounds.

The resort is owned by Herr Koenig. He is clearly a weirdo and obviously untrustworthy too, but he’s also charming somehow, with his piercing blue eyes, but it’s in a faux-nice, presumptuously intrusive, smug, condescending European kind of way. The way he insists on pronouncing Gretchen’s name, by putting a hard and deliberate screech on the R only highlights the passive-aggressive cruelty of this rotten and insular little place in the Alps.

He’s also a fan of the Recorder, but then... who isn't, am I right?

Gretchen, meanwhile, is seemingly the only one who can recognizes that this happy little small town in the mountains, with its friendly and smiling citizens, is seriously fucked-up somehow. And while she is willing to call this out, often in a great deadpan manner, unfortunately for her, she’s Cassandra.

Nobody listens. Nobody cares. She is all alone.

There’s implications that Gretchen might be experiencing some trauma-based hallucinations maybe, or maybe she has a history of them, or that maybe there’s a history of drug use, or some kind of similar trouble in her past to explain the lack of response to her complaints. But mostly, it’s pretty clear that her father Luis, and his new wife Beth, are in general more concerned with Alma’s issues than they are with any of Gretchen’s. This is especially true once Alam begins to develop strange new seizures. Lucky for them, the resort town’s local hospital is coincidentally well prepared to deal with such issues…

But still, it’s clear from the very first moment that Gretchen is right.

There’s definitely a shadow over the resort. Something is very, very off there. The locals are weird. People go missing. The guests have an alarming tendency to vomit suddenly and inexplicably. There’s guttural screaming from the woods, as well as a strange and disorienting time loop sensation that accompanies a piercing alien trilling. Also, while riding her bike home late one night, a hooded woman, baleful red eyes gleaming from behind her dark sunglasses, chases Gretchen through the night time streets while screeching.

There’s secrets here, bad secrets.

Soon enough, Gretchen meets a detective named Henry who is investigating a murder linked to the hooded woman. She also becomes close to a young woman named Ed, who is a guest at the resort. The two plan to run away together to Paris, but their escape attempt is thwarted when the hooded woman forces their car off the road. Gretchen is injured in the crash and is confined at home, while Ed recovers in the hospital.

During this time, Gretchen discovers a heartfelt connection with her mute half-sister Alma, something that she previously had been closed off to.

But as things get crazier, and spiral more and more out of control, Herr Koenig traps Gretchen and reveals the truth… the hooded woman is not human at all, but a member of a near-human species that, much like cuckoo birds, relies on brood parasitism. They use their strange piercing shrieks to disorient humans, and also to activate their young, which they had implanted within human surrogates, who then raised the young cuckoo-humans until they are ready to rejoin their true kind. Koenig has been acting as a kind of shepherd for this weird little species, creating both a breeding ground with the resort, and a safe habitat within the surrounding forest. Also, Luis and Beth stayed at this resort years ago for their honeymoon, so that means that Alma is one of the cuckoo people too.

After that, all Gretchen cares about is saving her sister, and getting them both far, far away from the resort.

This is a film that basically illustrates the importance of two rules:

1. Never go to a second location with a weirdo.
2. Never be afraid to be rude and/or violent towards presumptuous strangers.

The fear of a weird small town is a valid one, as those are dangerous places to be, especially nowadays, especially when you’re an outsider, or strange, or viewed as difficult. This can be true of families too, especially when you’re from the previous version of the family, the permanent outsider. Cuckoo really hits on those feelings really well. It also does an excellent job of highlighting the danger that is posed to outsiders by angry and screaming white women.

But for the most part, this is a frustrating film.

It feels like it has something to say, or that it thinks it really has something to say, maybe something about environmental preservation, or maybe nature vs. nurture, or sibling rivalries, or blended families, or found families. Perhaps it's something about the struggle with grief, or it's possibly something about reproductive rights, it’s not really clear. Mostly, whatever message it thinks it has, it feels skipped past, too diaphanous, too shallow. The film touches on these things, a little bit, but it doesn’t explore them at all, let alone make any kind of statement.

This is a film of overlapping genres. It’s kind of a cult horror, it’s kind of a folk horror, it’s a bit of a psychological thriller and a monster movie, and also a kind of sci-fi mystery, and that blending works, at least at first, but with such a murky and muddled story, one that really stumbles in its back half, who cares? Because really, much like being able to make a plane take off, but not being able to land it, in the end, what‘s the more important skill? While the screeching woman is definitely a bold and shocking monster, especially in her first appearance, after that, she’s the definition of diminishing returns. That’s the film’s basic problem. The more we get to see of the issue, the more of the mystery that’s revealed, the less it works.

The story is just too… tenuous? It’s all there, it’s just not very full. This can be distracting while watching, as it’s a lot of “What’s going on? Oh… wait… what?” It honestly feels like Tilman Schafer, the writer/director, is way more in love with the whole cuckoo idea than anyone else is, and at no point, no one said to them, “Yeah, but what does this all mean?” Because that’s the whole question. What is this story actually about? I don’t know.

Worse, it’s not even scary.

More of a stylish, but small sci-fi-tinged adventure, I will say that’s it’s still fun. Mostly. It also looks great. It was shot in bright and beautiful 35mm film, and it has a gorgeous mid-century aesthetic that not only do I love, it just feels absolutely right for the world of the film. So that was all good, but still, like I said, Cuckoo is frustrating watch, made all the worse because it’s an exceptionally well-made film with a talented cast that is simply hampered by its poor storytelling and muddled themes. In a nutshell, when it started, I was like “I love this film” but by the end?

Cuckoo doesn’t even crack my top 20 of the year.