CUCKOO by Eric Lindbom
CUCKOO (In Theaters) is aptly named as it’s tuned to the key of kooky. German writer/director Tilman Singer, with wit and panache, mounts a sci-fi horror puzzler that keeps us off balance.
Hunter Schaefer (who plays a trans character on EUPHORIA) has a flinty intensity as Gretchen a young girl who sullenly moves with her stern father (Martin Csokas), stepmom (Jessica Henwick) and young mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) to a Bavarian Alps resort. The craggy peaks aren’t foreboding, like Dracula’s Carpathian mountains but gorgeous and there’s a sun dappled quality to the early going.
Their genial host Herr König runs both the resort and a nearby hospital. Since we know he’s up to no good Brit Dan Stevens (the DOWNTON ABBEY heart throb) dispenses with any pretense of normality upfront. Stevens has a blast in the Peter Lorre/Udo Kier role as an immediately untrustworthy heavy with sky blue eyes who delivers stark warnings with manic glee. Stevens’ gonzo work reminds us of such beloved classic horror hams as Lionel Atwill and George Zucco.
Gretchen takes a night desk job at the resort and encounters bizarre guests including a vomiting woman and occasionally lapses into discordant déjà vu time loops where the same scene repeats while the movie screen liquifies.
While on her bike, in a jolting nighttime sequence, she’s pursued by an eerie harpy, a bird-like woman with a screechy scream. After suffering several attacks, walking wounded Gretchen (bandaged and beat up) will eventually learn König is trying to preserve this half human creature. It impregnates unsuspecting humans in the manner of the cuckoo bird which he tells us, slips its eggs in others’ nests forcing those unsuspecting bird moms to raise its offspring.
CUCKOO belongs to the burgeoning category of art house horror a specialty of the forward-looking distributor NEON which also recently brought us the more memorable, harrowing LONGLEGS. CUCKOO is skimpier with scares but also sky high on directorial style. The fact Simon Waskou’s score is among its strongest element is not faint praise (especially to anyone ever shook by Goblin’s piercing soundtrack on Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA). Waskou composed several ear worm siren songs several of which throw the Alma character into epileptic seizures.
While Singer devises a fresh monster premise he doesn’t stick the landing. A personal pet peeve of mine is when horror writers paint themselves into a corner and shoot their way out, resorting to unsuspenseful action flick ballistics. Seeing Stevens’ mad doctor wielding a shot gun vs. say a scalpel feels wrong. That said, enough goes right with CUCKOO to divert spook cineastes vs. high body count gorehounds.
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weaned on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
