Cuckoo Assessment – ‘Nice performances, fashionable filmmaking, and a particular persona’

Throughout 2024, Dan Stevens has been delivering performances which might be more and more… nicely, cuckoo. Whether or not dishing up gleefully gory carnage (and withering onion-based put-downs) in Abigail, or changing kaiju canines as monster-dentist Trapper in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the previous Downton heartthrob is in full embrace of the bizarre. Offbeat horror Cuckoo continues that streak admirably. Right here, he performs the severely shifty Herr König, proprietor of a Bavarian vacation resort that merely emanates unhealthy vibes. Whether or not menacingly invading individuals’s private area (“Guten Tag!”), menacingly sniffing asparagus, or menacingly trilling a bit of wood flute, it’s a delight to see Stevens in such playfully bonkers territory.

Besides it’s solely Hunter Schafer’s Gretchen (or, “Greht-yen”, as König pronounces it) who appears to clock how severely off König is. The truth is, the entire resort is odd. Friends maintain throwing up. A bizarre sign is emitting from the close by woods. A mysterious determine runs round at midnight. The Euphoria star carries Cuckoo brilliantly — convincing each as a disaffected teen and as a blood-soaked closing woman when issues go bird-shit loopy. She’s slouched and awkward, with a minimal tolerance for König’s strangeness, and an growing frustration at her father’s incapacity to see it. Grieving the lack of her mom, Gretchen is reluctantly alongside for the journey in Germany, feeling displaced in her family amongst her dad’s new spouse Beth (Jessica Henwick) and their daughter Alma (Mila Lieu).

Whereas its two lead performances are pitch-perfect, Cuckoo’s script lets it down considerably. Written and directed by German filmmaker Tilman Singer, it’s bursting with idiosyncratic characters and weird beats, taking part in with micro time-loops and nightmare-logic modifying — however when the time involves peel again the movie’s mysteries, it each over- and under-explains itself. Characters will exposition-dump at one another inelegantly, grinding proceedings to a halt — and but, the intricacies of the resort’s secrets and techniques nonetheless increase appreciable questions come the top credit. The extra uncovered Cuckoo’s foe turns into within the third act, the much less scary issues get. Holding issues extra indirect would have been a bolder alternative.

As a result of, elsewhere, the movie is basically daring. It’s fantastically shot, with vivid off-kilter colors and a grainy, tactile texture courtesy of Paul Faltz’s 35mm pictures. It has correctly oozy deep-red faux blood, just like the horror greats of previous. It boasts burbling, cracking, creaking sound design to set you on edge. There’s a confidence to the filmmaking that guarantees nice issues to come back from Tilman Singer. Simply maintain the deranged Dan Stevens performances dialled up, and tone down the cuckoo-splaining.