Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” is a horror film that's unlike anything you’ve ever seen, even though it pays overt homage to its predecessors in the genre. The German writer-director gleefully combines tones, performance styles, mythology, music, a reverence for the natural world and contemporary allegory into an unpredictable chaos, out of which emerges the most fantastically effective creeping dread. One may not entirely understand exactly what is going on in “Cuckoo,” but there’s no denying how it makes you feel: rattled, unsettled, psychically imprinted with unforgettable images and sensations, which is how every good piece of horror should leave its audience.
Singer makes the audience an active, even guilty participant in “Cuckoo,” it's title a nod to another famous avian-themed horror film by Alfred Hitchcock. At one point, co-star Dan Stevens breaks the fourth wall, looking directly into the lens, talking to a character on the other side of a surveillance camera, but essentially speaking to us, the audience, reminding us how wonderful it is that we’ve been able to witness the terrifying events that have unfolded. It’s akin to that moment in “The Birds” when a character looks into the camera and declares, “I think you’re the cause of all this.”
That participatory knowingness is imbued into the cinematography itself, executed by Paul Faltz on 35mm with a look that alternates between shadowy fear and gauzy fantasy. The prowling camera makes connections, showing us where to look, sneaking up on our hero, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) when she least expects it. She's a surly American teenager who has been dragged to the Bavarian Alps with her father, Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick) and young half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) in the wake of her mother’s death. Her parents are there to plan a new resort for a Herr König (Stevens) and Gretchen gets a job at his current place, a run-down and retro mountain hotel where bizarre things happen to young women with a disturbing frequency.
Gretchen is a refreshing kind of horror "final girl": She instantly becomes suspicious of the happenings going on around her and tries to leave as soon as possible. On her bike at night, she’s pursued by a screeching woman, and when her fears are dismissed, she tries to hitch a ride to Paris with comely hotel guest Ed (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). But Gretchen is stuck in a strange loop, unable to escape this place and becoming increasingly battered in the process. She escapes a car wreck and spends the rest of the film bandaged, bruised and broken, ultimately submitting to the fact that she will have to learn what’s happening here in order to liberate herself from it.
With the prevalence of puking young woman, female figures darting through the woods and Herr König’s suave lecherousness, it all becomes clear that the nefarious goings-on in this town have to do with the control of women’s bodies, even if the true nature of these circumstances remain somewhat mysterious after all is said and done. (Singer never quite explains it all in “Cuckoo,” which is a good thing.) But the contemporary allegory of patriarchal control over reproduction pulsates throughout, even as the film remains open to multiple readings.
That social relevance keeps us somewhat tethered to reality, as do multiple film references, from westerns to “Psycho,” which allow “Cuckoo” to spin out in all its European fairy-tale weirdness. Schaefer delivers her best performance to date, and the cast surrounding her are all distinct and odd in their own ways. At times, it feels like every actor is in a different movie, though the variegated tones come together in bone-rattling sound design and textured cinematography to create an incredibly arresting cinematic experience. Singer demonstrates himself to be a mad scientist of celluloid sensation, creating a hybridized monster of influences, images, sounds and emotions that you won’t soon forget.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .
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