'Cuckoo' Review: Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens Duel in the Alps

Birds of a feather flock together in this weird horror thriller

A low-key resort in the German Alps is the setting for director and screenwriter Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo. But as any good horror buff knows, beware of Greeks (or Germans, in this case) bearing gifts, as things aren’t what they appear. Singer’s Cuckoo holds commonalities with several other films released this year, and to name any of them constitutes a spoiler. But it’s those similarities that end up being the film’s undoing, coming off as derivative when it should be reveling far more in the weirdness of its premise.

Hunter Schafer plays Gretchen, a teenage girl who is going through it. She’s recently been forced to move in with her father, his new wife and their daughter who are moving out of the U.S. to live at the Resort Alpschatten in Germany. There she meets the resort’s owner, Herr Konig (Dan Stevens), and a group of colorful characters that wouldn’t feel out of place in Twin Peaks. Gretchen tries to acclimate but when a mysterious hooded woman threatens her life the girl starts to wonder if something more sinister is going on.

Gore Verbinski’s 2016 film A Cure for Wellness is a close cousin to Cuckoo, the tones of both films eerily similar. Gretchen’s arrival leads to immediate suspicion, from a neighbor saying she hadn’t “heard” of Gretchen to random women spontaneously throwing up in the resort’s store. Schafer brings a perfect blend of innocent, desperate to be believed, and someone who has watched a lot of horror movies and understands something weird is going on. So many of Schafer’s line-readings are hilariously on-the-nose, particularly her “that’s a weird way to put it” line in the trailer which hits even better in the context of the movie.

Dan Steven also seems to be having the time of his life as Herr Konig. We’ve seen Stevens play kooky characters before, but there’s such an inner fire in his performance considering the background. He’s a bizarre true believer in something that, when said out loud, sounds so silly. But when he pulls out that recorder like he’s a demented Willy Wonka summoning an Oompa Loompa it’s gold. By the third act, when the film turns into an action movie with Stevens pumping a rifle the audience has faith that Stevens understands the assignment.

Singer’s biggest issue is with tone. Where A Cure for Wellness knew it was going for bold and operatic, Cuckoo tries to hit that same stride before pulling back. Herr Konig’s creepy interest in Gretchen and her little sister Alma (Mila Lieu giving a fabulous feature-film debut) never rises above “hmm, that’s off.” The introduction of a police officer with a grudge against Konig makes the third act feel like a funny “they’re two dudes who have gone mental” but there’s no added depth. And the cuckoo elements of the title could have yielded interest, but there’s never any true sense of worldbuilding for them so the entire nature of Konig’s plot falls apart if you breath on it wrong.

There’s a level of incoherence to the plot that becomes more muddled once the hooded woman’s background, and the true intentions of Resort Alpschatten are revealed. And because there’s so much time spent trying to make the twist sensical, it causes other elements to be completely abandoned. Case in point, Alma starts to experience seizures that could be related to what’s happening or not. Her mother, Beth (a waste of a good Jessica Henwick), starts to fall ill towards the end for reasons that are never explained at all. Even the complicity of Gretchen’s father (played by Marton Csokas) are never contexualized. Is it a grand conspiracy or not? The movie sets things up that way but gets distracted by shinier elements. This is also a movie where a major turn revolves around someone having a tape-based answering machine, seemingly in 2024.

Really, Cuckoo just seems to explain weirdness and illogic as story development and it’s not. While Gretchen is a great everyday person plopped down into a horror movie, it leaves her doing things that just feel eye-roll inducing. (If someone tells me to “lock the doors and wait” I’d be more interested in asking why than wandering outside.) That’s coupled with a good glimmer of an idea that expands out into far more questions than answers. Cuckoo would have made a helluva short film and it’s limitations feel akin to movies that started in short features and expanded out (Lights Out is a great example).

Cuckoo is a decent entry into a strong year for horror, even if the parts don’t all fit together. Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens (and his recorder!) are worth seeing alone. It’s just frustrating that the plot feels wafer-thin and dumb.

Cuckoo is in theaters Friday, August 9.