Cuckoo

A sin that everyone who reviews anything commits is the sin of comparison. Stone Temple Pilots is a lot like Pearl Jam, Sleepaway Camp is a lot like Friday The 13th, and so on. It's reductive nature is both a positive and a negative; on the one hand, it gives the person reading the review a short-hand association upon which to make their decision. On the other hand, it boils down the movie to being just another version of something else. The key to using the comparison is making sure to highlight how it ISN'T like the other thing. I say this ahead to warn you, reader, that when I compare this movie to Phantasm (which is my favorite horror movie of all time), it is in specific ways, but it is not to suggest that Cuckoo captures, or even tries to capture, Phantasm's surrealist, dream-like atmosphere. I am reluctant to give a plot summary for Cuckoo, because it is one of a recent spate of horror movies where going in with as little information as possible is a benefit. The basic set-up is all you need to know: Gretchen is forced to move in with her father, step-mother, and mute half-sister, who are moving to the Bavarian Alps, where her father is helping design a mountain resort. She starts to notice weird occurrences while working at the resort. And that's all I'll say. Trust me, it's for the best. One of the things I love about Phantasm is that it is unapologetically weird, and fully committed to hitting you with weird in every scene. Just when you think you've wrapped your arms around seeing a very tall undertaker carry an occupied casket under his arm like a farmer would a bale of hay, you're seeing a silver ball fly through the hallways of a mortuary like a sentinel, or watching a severed finger turn into a mutated flying insect, or seeing an interdimensional gateway that looks like a tuning fork. The point of this non-stop barrage of weird isn't to beat you down, but to keep you guessing; this is a world where all of the rules have been turned on their head, and reality is a thin, gossamer veil that is falling to the floor. Cuckoo is very much like that, albeit in its own way; where Phantasm's surreal parade stems from something paranormal and the answers provoke more questions, Cuckoo is using an onslaught of weirdness and unexpected twists to tell an A-to-B-to-C story ... even if it doesn't always explicitly say how A leads to B. There's some reading between the lines and connecting of the dots you'll have to do, and even then, there's still some unanswered questions surrounding Cuckoo, but like Phantasm, it isn't to the movie's detriment. A little mystery is a good thing, and Cuckoo knows when to answer the question (if not always how best to answer the question) and when to let the mystery enrich the horror. For a movie like Cuckoo that is so dependent on keeping viewers on the razor's edge, two things have to be clicking on all cylinders: acting and direction. I have nothing but praise for Cuckoo's cast. Hunter Schafer plays Gretchen, and she is the engine that drives this movie. Gretchen starts the movie a dour, sullen teenager, racked with resentment over having to live with her dad in a foreign country and these people she doesn't consider family, and grief over the life she once had and no longer can have. Hunter Schafer's portrayal of angst and grief, and later on the growth and evolution Gretchen goes through, is absolutely wonderful. It would be so easy to make her the helpless waif that gets lucky; instead, she's resourceful, clever, and tenacious, and the viewer gets to watch her discover all this in real time. Any sense of helplessness or despair is because she doesn't have all the pieces to the puzzle, and even then, she still doesn't stop fighting back. That determination comes from Schafer, and she deserves her flowers. The direction, however, is the part where Cuckoo's blade cuts both ways. Visually, the movie is an absolute treat, knowing how to use both the vistas and scenery of the Bavarian Alps to its advantage, as well as the many interiors, to create the atmosphere of the movie. I wouldn't say the movie has a breakneck pace -- the twists and WTF moments come at a steady pace, but with enough space in between to give you a moment to absorb them, while keeping up the tension and terror. I never once felt like Cuckoo was trying to be smarter than me, and the pacing of the movie was excellent. Where Cuckoo's direction does falter, however, is in how serious it is. A movie this wild and with the premise it has and with the all-out barrage of crazy stuff begs to have an element of fun and a sense of knowing what it is, and Cuckoo doesn't. It plays everything straight as an arrow, aiming to be an A24-style prestige horror movie, and it isn't. I really liked Cuckoo, but I didn't love it, because it doesn't love itself; it wants to be something it isn't. Phantasm knew that it was a lower-budget B-movie, so it leaned in to it. Not in a self-referential, we're-in-on-the-joke way, but in a way that knew it wasn't high art so it wasn't going to try to convince you otherwise. Cuckoo is a guy in a tuxedo at a square dance; sure, he's the best dressed person in the room, but he's also overshot the mark and displayed a woeful misunderstanding of the assignment. Cuckoo's grim seriousness stands in contrast to a story so full of bonkers shit, but it thinks that bonkers shit is on the same wavelength of crazy as Se7en, and it just isn't. I liked Cuckoo. I really liked Cuckoo. Of all the lower-profile horror movies that got a tremendous amount of buzz in 2024 (Longlegs, In A Violent Nature, The First Omen), I liked it a lot more than the others. It has all the elements of a fantastic movie I should love. But the movie's identity crisis keeps it from hitting that top tier for me. Maybe that's just a me thing and someone else won't see that. It's certainly not enough for me to avoid recommending it. Just know it may not be all you're hoping for.