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Critics’ Choices
Dan Stevens and Hunter Schafer face off in this strangely funny and undeniably wacky horror comedy about cross-species pollination.
By Jeannette Catsoulis
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“Is this normal?” asks a hotel guest in “Cuckoo” after seeing another guest stagger and vomit in the lobby. Viewers might ask the same question about a film whose name can reveal both the sensitivity of its director and the nature of its plot.
Endowed with a singular and inexplicable vision, the German filmmaker Tilman Singer proves once again – after his first experimental album, “Luz” (2019) – that he is more attracted to sensation than meaning. Freed from logic, his paintings dance on the border between the captivating and the confusing, the exciting and the annoying. Zooming several steps closer to an identifiable plot, “Cuckoo” revolves around Gretchen (a perfect Hunter Schafer), a grieving and volatile 17-year-old whose mother has died and whose father (Marton Csokas) brought to live with his new circle of relatives in a hotel in the Bavarian Alps.
As soon as he arrives, nothing goes right. Missing her mother and her life in America, Gretchen is slow to connect with her dynamic stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and her much younger half-sister, Alma (Mila Lieu). ), who is mute and suffers unexplained seizures. Adding to Gretchen’s discomfort is the complex’s delicate owner, Herr König (Dan Stevens), who turns out to be strangely obsessed with Alma. Creepy screams fill the woods and a creepy figure dressed in white turns out to be stalking Gretchen when she returns home from painting at the resort reception. Maybe the knife we saw her unpack will be useful after all.
A story of experimentation between humans and birds with creepy embellishments, “Cuckoo” is unsubtle and unbalanced. The narrative can be confusing, but the atmosphere is a spectacle of natural phenomena and Stevens, thank God, quickly grasps the comedic possibilities of the film’s themes and the madness of his character. Picking up on his impeccable German accessory from 2021’s captivating sci-fi romance “I’m Your Man,” he features a seductive, creepy König who’s less of a mad scientist and more of a sexy ornithologist. Obsessed with the idea of replicating – in an indescribable way – the reproductive behaviors of the titular bird, König wants the cooperation of young volunteers. Gretchen doesn’t need to become one of them.
Shooting on a 35-millimeter film, Paul Faltz, supported by Simon Waskow’s plaintive and agitated score, analyzes the surreality of Gretchen’s trapped situation 22 with close-ups. The ears tremble and twitch in reaction to mysterious calls; the throat palpitates with an immediate and broken pulse; Viscous secretions are passed from one woman to another. And as the season’s risks become more pronounced and Gretchen’s wounds multiply, the film’s insane body horror ambitions become the means through which she will triumph over her pain and heal her emotional dislocation.
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