Cuckoo (2024)

AUGUST 11, 2024

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

After scoring a massive hit with Longlegs last month, I'm sure Neon was hoping for a little more than $3m for the opening weekend of Cuckoo (indeed, it barely outsold Longlegs itself, on its 5th week). But it's a little less audience friendly than even that was, and lacked the curiosity factor that drove Osgood Perkins' serial killer opus to such unexpected success. Still, I was happy to see that my crowd was fairly full, even if that meant I had to change seats because the dipshit next to me kept using his phone; I go to the movies partly because I like the crowd experience (especially for horror films) but I do wish I could, I dunno, maybe pick that crowd myself.

Anyway, while Cuckoo wasn't exactly the usual multiplex fare, it was Marvel-level inviting compared to Tilman Singer's first film Luz, which despite only being 70 minutes long managed to bore me into "how much is left?" territory by its halfway point. That one was another of these "vibes horror" movies that are coming along with increasing regularity, and as I've mentioned before, I don't really connect with such films. I wouldn't say Cuckoo is a complete departure from that kind of thing, but felt more like a happy medium between similar movies (which include Skinamarink and, well, the other movies from Osgood Perkins) and a more traditional story.

Indeed, I don't even know if I could accurately summarize Luz ("a possession tale involving what appears to be a hypnosis session to find a missing person" is about as specific I can get) but Cuckoo has, on the surface, a pretty normal, even somehwat familiar story: a rebellious teenager (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move to a new home with her father and his new wife, along with a stepsister she doesn't care much about. But as she starts to explore the ground of said new home (in this case a resort hotel in the Alps) she discovers creepy goings on, which her father and stepmother seem oblivious to (or... PART OF?), forcing her to take matters into her own hands and maybe save her innocent step-sibling along the way. A movie with the same sounding plot could have been a Screen Gems movie circa 2009 starring Adrianne Palicki or Leighton Meester.

But the devil's in the details of course, and it doesn't take long for the off-kilter stuff to kick in. First off the resort is run by Dan Stevens, so you know whether he's good or bad he's gonna be WEIRD; despite his handsome romance novel cover appearance the dude seems to be from whatever planet we got Burgess Meredith from. He always finds a way to make his characters left of center, even in big budget junk like Godzilla x Kong, so you know damn well he's not gonna just be some boring villain. No, he's going to talk about birds and play a little whistle and spray victims not with chloroform or pepper spray but pheremones. It's just the Dan Stevens way, and I love that this is his THIRD genre movie in this year alone (after GxK and Abigail), for a guy who could have parlayed his Downton Abbey and Beauty and the Beast success into "the next Hugh Grant!" territory but instead has, well, taken more after current day Hugh Grant (who is awesome) instead of the blander one we got during his '90s heyday.

And while he is as good as always, the movie really belongs to Schafer as Gretchen. I do not watch Euphoria* so I have zero familiarity with her, but she is an absolute gem here, keeping her "I'm over it" attitude juuuust short of crossing the line into unlikable territory, so that you're right there with her as she rolls her eyes at the various goings-on and (naturally) root for her to triumph when things get scary. Her reaction to one of Stevens' creepy lines (I won't repeat it here just in case, but it's in the trailer) is so good that I almost wish the movie had leaned more into that kind of irony, though given its strange nature it's probably for the best that they didn't risk turning more audiences away by going full horror comedy. It's got a sense of humor, but it's not a "funny" genre movie.

It's also not a body horror movie, despite what one of the blurbs on that trailer claim. Unless you count a nasty cut to the head (injury from one of the movie's few traditional scare scenes, a chase that ends in a glass door) and a very uncomfortable looking cast after a car accident, nothing really happens to Schafer's body, and the other targets in the film are left alone when it comes to that sort of thing as well. Without spoiling things, for this to be considered a true body horror movie, it would have to be told from the perspective of Gretchen's stepmother or something. Just my two cents and maybe a warning for anyone excited for a new Cronenberg-type film. I feel that quote was setting up a particular sect of the fanbase for disappointment.

That said, it did remind me of The Brood at times, with a little bit of Phenomena and A Cure For Wellness thrown in for good measure. But it's got enough of its own personality that the reminders never distracted me all that much (or worse, made me wish I was watching those instead), so don't get me wrong - it's not one of those movies where a filmmaker homages so many of his influences that he doesn't have room for any ideas of his own. I would guarantee that no one on the planet could possibly guess the motivations behind the villains' actions even after the first half hour or so; indeed if you WERE a fan of Luz you'll be happy to know this movie shares its ability to never once get predictable. It's just here it worked for me, whereas in Luz it did not.

That said there are a couple of minor wrinkles. One is that it appears to be edited down from a longer version at times; there's a scene where the villain is about to shoot a victim, and Schafer runs in to stop it from happening, only the villain is completely elsewhere by the time she arrives. But it's not played as a "Oh crap, where did he go?" kind of moment; Shafer doesn't even react to his absence, as if she already knew he had left (i.e. during a scene that was removed). And at one point her and her only ally (Luz's Jan Bluthardt) are both wearing big can headphones around their necks; we can infer why (the villains use a weird sound to disorient victims) but their sudden appearance suggests a scene where they figure out that they could wear them to protect themselves. Nothing crippling, but noticeably jumpy editing means there's probably a few trims we didn't pick up on in the moment (I'd be willing to bet there was more with Astrid Bergès-Frisbey's character Ed, too, as she basically disappears for all but one scene of the second half).

There's also a time loop thing that's never clarified. And I don't mean "HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?"; I don't care about that. No, the issue is that it's not entirely clear that the characters realize they're in a timeloop when it happens, except for one time that it almost certainly does. It's a weird point of reference, but what it needed was a moment like in NOES 4: Dream Master, when Dan starts noticing the deja vu and repeats Alice's line along with her to snap her out of it and let us in the audience know they caught on. Here, it happens I think four times before a character makes a "Hey, didn't I already do that?" kind of face, but then the loop ends before they can use the knowledge to their advantage. And then it just never happens again anyway. The inconsistency, coupled with what is a very odd plot point (even by this movie's standards) makes it stick out as just random for the sake of being random. If those other scenes were lost to keep the runtime down, I feel chopping these out would have been a better way to get that done.

Otherwise, it's just a freaky fun time. It's not unpleasant or anything (rare for a modern day mad scientist movie, especially one touted as "body horror"); most of the violence (including the villains' demise) is off-screen, and gore is kept to a minimum as well. And the movie's weirdness never overwhelms the narrative; it's more of a garnish than the main course, which is the best way to go for me. It gives the movie a personality and lets it stand apart from its influences, but the main goal is telling a coherent story with a character you want to succeed - a perfect approach in my opinion. May all involved continue to walk that fine line.

What say you?

*My two favorite movies of the year are Immaculate with Sydney Sweeney and Challengers with Zendaya, and now this was a nice surprise after being so down on the director's previous film, while making me a fan of Schafer. So maybe I should just watch Euphoria? Its central cast certainly has good taste in scripts.

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