Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo is a horror film unlike any you’ve ever seen, even though it openly pays homage to its predecessors in the genre. The German screenwriter and director gleefully combines tones, acting styles, mythology, music, references, reverence for nature and contemporary allegories to create an unpredictable chaos that creates the most fantastic and effective creeping fear. You may not fully understand what’s going on in Cuckoo, but there’s no denying the feelings it makes you feel: unsettled, disturbed, psychologically marked by unforgettable images and sensations, just as any good piece of genre cinema should leave its audience feeling.
Singer makes the audience an active, even guilty participant in “Cuckoo,” a nod to another bird-themed horror film by Alfred Hitchcock. At one point, co-star Dan Stevens breaks the fourth wall by looking directly into the lens and talking to a character on the other side of a security camera, but simultaneously speaking to us, the audience, reminding us how wonderful it is that we were able to witness the unfathomably horrific events that unfolded during the film. It’s comparable to a moment in “The Birds” when a character looks into the camera and declares, “I think you’re the cause of all this.”
This participatory knowledge is woven into the cinematography, shot on 35mm by Paul Faltz, whose gaze oscillates between shadowy fear and hazy fantasies. The camera moves on its own, making connections, showing us where to look, and sneaking up on our heroine Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) when she least expects it. Gretchen is a sullen American teenager who, after her mother’s death, has been whisked away to the Bavarian Alps with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and young half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). Her parents are there to plan a new resort for a Mr. King (Stevens), and Gretchen gets a job at his current abode, a run-down, old-fashioned mountain hotel where bizarre things happen to young women with disturbing frequency.
Gretchen is a refreshing kind of final girl: she immediately becomes suspicious of what’s going on around her and tries to get away from there as quickly as possible. She is stalked at night by a screaming woman on her bicycle, and when her fears are allayed, she tries to hitchhike to Paris with handsome hotel guest Ed (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). But Gretchen is stuck in a strange loop, unable to escape this place and getting more and more beaten along the way. She escapes a car crash and spends the rest of the film bandaged, bruised and broken, until she finally comes to terms with the fact that she needs to learn what’s happening here to break free of it.
With so many young women vomiting, female figures scurrying through the woods, and Mr. King’s urbane lasciviousness, it’s clear that the nefarious goings-on in this town have something to do with the control of the female body, even if the true nature of this situation ultimately remains a little mysterious (Singer never explains everything that’s good in Cuckoo). But the contemporary allegory of patriarchal control over reproduction pulses throughout the film, while remaining open enough to allow for multiple interpretations.
That social relevance keeps us somewhat grounded in reality, as do the classic film influences, from Westerns to “Psycho,” allowing “Cuckoo” to thrive in all its European arthouse horror-fairytale craziness. Schaefer delivers her best performance, and the cast around her are all unique and downright weird in their own ways.
At times it feels like every actor is in a different film, but the varied tones combine with the bone-jarring sound design and textured cinematography to create an incredibly immersive cinematic experience. Singer proves himself to be the mad scientist of the celluloid sensation, creating a hybrid monster of influences, images, sounds and emotions that you won’t soon forget.
