\u201cCuckoo\u201d gets more confusing the more it explains itself. The further writer-director Tilman Singer goes in articulating the strange goings-on that drive this stylish, unsettling thriller, the less compelling it becomes.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Trying to comprehend the hows and whys of this twisted mystery creates a distraction from which the film never recovers. Either we needed to know more, or we needed to know less. Ambiguity actually would have been preferable; Singer creates such a foreboding mood, it would have been enough to hold us in its spell. Instead, we go from \u201cWhoa\u201d to \u201cWait, what?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, deeply committed performances from Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens keep us hanging on, at least for a while. Both actors are doing extremely different things here, and that friction creates both humor and tension from the get-go. As he has in films as disparate as \u201cThe Guest,\u201d \u201cAbigail,\u201d and \u201cEurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,\u201d Stevens uses his gorgeous looks to sinister effect. (And as he did in \u201cI\u2019m Your Man,\u201d he speaks perfect German.) There\u2019s a slickness about him, a piercing quality to his eyes that makes him untrustworthy yet fascinating. Schafer grabs us in a totally different way: She\u2019s our straightforward conduit, the only one who recognizes that something is seriously wrong within the film\u2019s idyllic setting and is willing to call it out. But, reminiscent of Florence Pugh\u2019s struggle in \u201cMidsommar,\u201d no one will listen to her in this beautiful and dangerous foreign land.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schafer stars as Gretchen, a 17-year-old American who\u2019s recently lost her mother. In a fog of grief, she\u2019s forced to move with her father (Marton Csokas), his new wife (Jessica Henwick), and their young, mute daughter (Mila Lieu) to a resort in the Bavarian Alps. Working with cinematographer Paul Faltz, Singer frames this breathtaking place as a brutalist prison, shooting from the bottom of the mountains upward to signify how trapped Gretchen feels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stevens\u2019 smarmy Herr K\u00f6nig runs the place and has invited the family to stay a while as he works with Gretchen\u2019s father on his next development. From the start, though, severe shadows and chilly reflections indicate to us that this is anything but a relaxing retreat. And Herr K\u00f6nig\u2019s demeanor, which morphs from merely passive-aggressive to outright controlling, makes her even more desperate to flee. The exaggerated way he pronounces her name, leaning hard into the R in Gretchen, is amusing but also symbolic of his arrogant cruelty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But unnatural forces also seem to be holding her in place. One particularly gripping sequence finds Gretchen riding her bike home at night after reluctantly working a shift at the hotel\u2019s front desk. With expert pacing, Singer and editors Terel Gibson and Philipp Thomas reveal just enough beneath the streetlights to terrify us. Similarly, there\u2019s a hypnotic repetition of sequences that occurs over and over again, each time building to a startling crescendo. A seismic shimmer and a high-pitched shriek accompany this structure; while this sound design choice is disturbing at first, it eventually grows annoying, especially once we discover its source.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cCuckoo\u201d gets more confusing the more it explains itself. The further writer-director Tilman Singer goes in articulating the strange goings-on that drive this stylish, unsettling thriller, the less compelling it becomes.\u00a0 \u00a0 Trying to comprehend the hows and whys of this twisted mystery creates a distraction from which the film never recovers. Either we needed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[48,47],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horror-movies","tag-horror","tag-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}