Fresh Horror for the Taking! “Cuckoo” Available on Amazon!
Moving to the Bavarian Mountains can be breathtaking, relaxingly scenic, and peacefully remote. For Gretchen, however, the involuntary move comes shortly after the death of her mother, and she’s forced to leave the U.S. with her father, stepmother, and half-sister to now live at the base of the German Bavarians where an isolated vacation resort is overseen by Herr König who has hired Gretchen’s father to architecturally design an extension to the resort’s vast campus. Reluctant to make the best of an undesirable situation, Gretchen attempts to run away with another woman and go back to America but on the way, an accident lands Gretchen in the nearby hospital and the odd, omnipresent and oppressive sensation that has surrounded her upon her arrival begins to unravel around Herr König and the resort grounds. Disorientating visions and sounds, entranced female guests vomiting in the hotel, and an aggressively cloaked women pursing her in the shadows, a battered and bruised Gretchen can’t convince her family of the oddities around her or the ones that have plagued her mute half-sister without warning like a flash flood but with the help of a police detective, the only other person who believes her, the two investigate the strange threat that’s closing in on Gretchen’s family.
For fans of the 2018 under-the-radar, mighty mite demonic possession film “Luz,” director Tilman Singer helms another inimitable horror that’s literally for the birds. “Cuckoo” is Singer’s this year’s released production in which he penned the script. His sophomore feature-length film, a plotted preservation of a quickly diminishing deadly, infiltrating species, keeps in line with his Germanic heritage by filming on site at the base of the Bavarian Mountains around the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany. “Cuckoo” is a production of Neon, Fiction Park, and Waypoint Entertainment, spearheaded by producers Thor Bradwell (“Saint Clare”), Emily Cheung, Maria Tsigka, Josh Rosenbaum, Ken Kao (“Rampart”), Markus Halberschmidt, and Ben Rimmer (“Midsommar”).
Having established himself as a refined and charming British actor in the widely popular BBC series “Downton Abbey,” Dan Stevens has slowly but surely infiltrated himself in what Lydia Deetz might describe as strange and unusual films. Shortly after the untimely demise of the Matthew Crawley character, the principal love interest to Lady Mary (for those who know, know), Stevens jumped right into the Adam Wingard thriller “The Guest” where the then slightly over 30-year-old actor proves himself capable of portraying so much more than a stiff socialite. As resort owner, nature preservationist, and the overall prototype of Zen in Herr König, Stevens displays another side of his deranged splits while showcasing his perfection of the German language. Opposite Herr König in the teen heroine role is the rising star from “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” and the provocative HBO series “Euphoria,” Hunter Schafer. As Gretchen, Schafer instills a grappling of grief for a mother she was not ready to let go, institutes steadfast judgements about her father’s new family, and impresses a level of loneliness when having to move away from familiar America to the foreign and alienating grounds of Eastern Europe which all evoke the epitome of teenage angst who can’t see beyond her music, her longing for home, and her new family aversion to see that all those negative, destructive traits innately push her away from what’s important, her family. Herr König embodies Gretchen’s impediment to move forward while another, Henry the detective (Jan Bluthardt, “Luz”), is stitched to ground Gretchen as the past representation of events you can’t change and the anger it has over you. Jessica Henwick (“Love and Monsters”), Marton Csokas (“Evilenko”), Greta Fernández (“Embers”), Proschat Madani, Kalin Morrow, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey (“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”), and the introduction of Mila Lieu as the mute Alma rounds out the cast.
There are no Coco Puffs to go for here in what will be Tilman Singer’s signature breakthrough hit in the cult genre. “Cuckoo’s” unique spin on the certain genus of the titular bird is next to none as it radicalizes extreme measures to save a mimicking, infiltrating, surrogate-forcing species from extinction. The story, which takes on the play God and find out narrative, is a perfect prefect of cutting your nose off despite your face in both the sensationalized horror element and in the rite of passage of teenager squabbles that oxymoronically favors a contrasting parallel. “Cuckoo” falls into area of weirdness that could be an episode of the “Twilight Zone” in its earthbound peculiarity hidden from public view for decades, if not centuries, blending the once unforeseen man and animal into one and trying to keep that unity intact no matter what the natural process of survival decrees; the story goes between the shadows into its lockbox of nature’s little dirty secrets left in the dark recesses of the forgotten closet and what’s found there is unnatural, wrong, and perhaps even prehistoric. “Cuckoo” might be too weird. Understandably, audiences may find “Cuckoo’s” birdy thriller too intractable and maybe too, too far-fetched for a horror film that tiptoes around political hot topics, such as with the violation of women’s bodies and the pregnancy genetics that ensues. Yet, that controversial conversation starter inside a soupy mixture of on-your-toes tension and the solid acting from Schafer, Stevens, Bluthardt, Bergès-Frisbey, Lieu, Henwick, Csokas, and Morrow develop a much needed off-the-wall and cacophonous-stirring horror that offers a new breed of horror.
The unbelievably scary ordeal arrives onto Neon’s standard Blu-ray set with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD50, presented in the anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio 2.39:1 CinemaScope. Graded with a lower contrast, “Cuckoo’s” antiquated, perhaps wall-to-wall 70’s or 80’s veneer, elevates the finish with bolder conventional colors, enriching wood paneling, gaudy wallpaper, and the like to pop out rather than blend in. Textures are retained in finer fabrics but appear to be lost on much of the skin surfaces with the revolving door of lighting. Cinematographer Paul Faltz’s play on light, shadow, and depth creates tension, mood, and a lasting impression. The lossless English (and some German, which isn’t listed) language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix provides favorable fidelity, especially when a partial of the film’s story revolves around immersive sound – Gretchen’s music, vibrating vocal sirens, Herr König’s recorder tune, etc. Depth and range hit on the exact spatial amalgam, diffusing nicely and dynamically into the back and rear channels when scenes play out to a chase or civilly devolve into gunfire. The second, accompanying audio option is an English Descriptive Audio 2.0 mix that provides same quantity without much of the immersive quality. English and Spanish subtitles are optionally available. Bonus features include the making-of “Cuckoo” with snippet interviews and behind-the-scenes look, a video diary series, on-set interviews with actor Hunter Schafer, costume designer Frauke Firl, and production designer Dario Mendez Acosta, a handful of deleted scenes, and a teaser and theatrical trailer. Neon’s hard-encoded region A, standard Blu-ray comes in the traditional blue Amaray case with the poster art as primary cover design. Disc is pressed with a black background and “Cuckoo” in red font. There are no inserts or other tangible features. The R-rated film, for violence, bloody images, language, and brief teen drug use, has a runtime of 102 minutes.
Last Rites: “Cuckoo’s” a devouringly devilish and deranged nightmare discording from the pattern to breach onto a new form of terror.
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