There’s a dizzying amount to see and hear in German film-maker Tilman Singer’s brash style-over-substance horror Cuckoo, a film that pokes and prods and screeches with just about enough vim and volume to keep us mostly engaged. As the work of a newish-to-the-scene director, it’s a big, bold flex, and one that serves as more than ample evidence that he can be trusted to take on, and add flavour to, far more commercial movies. As proof of his ability as a writer it’s far less persuasive, a script that could generously be labelled opaque and more fairly called frequently incoherent.
How much one will be turned off by such hazy, haphazard plotting will be a matter of personal taste and in a period that’s seen the horror genre beset by films prioritising mood and atmosphere above all else, it will probably find its unbothered audience. It’s far easier to like than last month’s similarly lopsided Longlegs, another stylish yet baffling indie horror, mostly because it’s taking itself far less seriously, its charmingly goofy streak almost excusing its inevitable descent into nonsense.
What’s surprising, given how impenetrable Singer’s debut, Luz, was and how head-scratching so much of his follow-up often is, is how earnest and broad it can also be. The cosy set-up – wayward teen moves with family to new town and uncovers mystery – is reminiscent of school-age Christopher Pike or RL Stine YA and the tone remains zippy throughout despite the rising death count. Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer, one of the show’s more impressive finds, plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old glumly moving from the US to the German Alps for a new life she’d rather not be embarking upon. She’s being dragged by her father and his new wife along with their daughter, a child she refuses to call her sister.
Her father is working for a local, played by Dan Stevens showing off his perfect German once again after 2021’s I’m Your Man, and Gretchen soon starts working for him as well, manning reception at the hotel he owns. But the job starts feeding her growing distrust of the new surroundings with strange incidents taking place with alarming frequency, somehow related to a mysterious woman who roams the area at night.
The escalation then has a familiar rhythm but Singer takes more effort than most to really focus on the art of it, delivering more eye-catching sequences (a bicycle chase is a truly inventive standout) and a more robust sense of place than the majority of horror films released at this time. Cuckoo’s eccentricities, of which there are many, feel organic to the world he’s created rather than added for extra quirk and one hopes that with an inevitable ascent (this is the kind of eye-popper that gets him a franchise job), he will continue to fly his freak flag high.
But as effective as the film might be in the moment, Singer’s increasingly sloppy plotting starts to get in the way of the bigger picture by the frantic last act, which is both strangely filled with exposition info dumps yet still lacking in much sense. Singer goes for big emotional kickers about the importance of belonging and family but still can’t quite cobble together an explanation that hangs together. This combination of multiplex ambition and arthouse vaguery makes it an odd, uneven little film that scrapes through thanks to an excess of personality, both from Singer’s direction and his cast. There’s a committed final girl performance from Schafer, proving to be a far more winning lead than her Euphoria co-stars this past year, and Stevens going full-throttle weird (it’s a much better use of him than his unfunny Hollywood supporting turns this year in Abigail and Godzilla v Kong 2) and they help to add clarity to the foggier finale.
For Singer, Cuckoo’s gonzo battiness is both blessing and curse.
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Cuckoo is out in US cinemas on 9 August and in the UK on 23 August