Movie Review: ‘Kokil’ | Moviephone
Hunter Shaffer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
Opening in theaters on August 9th is ‘Coquio’ directed by Tilman Singer and starring Hunter Shaffer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Mila Liu, Jan Bluthard and Marton Kossokas.
Related Article: Director Tillman Talks Singer ‘Cuckoo’ and Working with Hunter Shaffer
Initial thoughts
Hunter Shaffer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
German filmmaker Tillman Singer made a splash on the festival circuit a few years ago with his horror feature debut, ‘Luz’, and now he’s back with a second entry in what could be one of the more loopy, mysterious filmographies. Genre if he sticks to it. ‘Cuckoo’ starts on a strange note and gets even stranger from there, finding a nice balance between a serious sense of dread and an underlying tone of camp for most of its running time.
It begins to struggle in its third act, and while we move away from over-explaining films, ‘Cuckoo’ could use a bit more clarity down the homestretch. But it’s still a satisfying watch in many ways, thanks in particular to the great work of Hunter Shaffer and the great Dan Stevens.
Story and direction
‘Cuckoo’ is directed by Tilman Singer.
Hunter Shaffer (best known for her lead role in ‘Euphoria’ but also recently seen in ‘Kinds of Kindness’) plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old girl grieving the death of her mother. He is forced to move with his father (Martin Sokas), his wife (Jessica Henwick) and their mute young daughter Alma (Mila Liu) to the Bavarian Alps, where her architect father is hired to redesign a resort owned by Herr Koenig (Dan). Stevens).
The Alps are beautiful, mysterious and vast, aging, almost empty resorts brood on the side of the mountain, and Herr Koenig himself is a ready mix of slippery charm and inherent danger who offers Gretchen a job at the hotel’s front desk. Grief-stricken, angry and bored (she also plays bass in a rock band she’s been forced to leave behind), Gretchen takes the gig – and immediately strange things start happening.
A woman wanders into the lobby in a kind of trance and starts vomiting, Alma herself has a seizure that actually seems to cause time itself to malfunction (a callback to a mysterious scene that opens the film involving a different character), and worst of all , Gretchen emits a piercing, animalistic shriek as she is run over by a woman riding her bike one night with glowing eyes. Herr König seems to know exactly what is going on, and an attempt to escape by Gretchen – a young hotel guest (Austrid Burgess-Frisbe) who takes a shine to him – ends in a serious car accident with the teenager in hospital.
(L to R) Greta Fernandez and Hunter Shaffer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
Up to this point, ‘Cuckoo’ has created a steady underlying sense of strange, uneasy justification, thanks to the atmospheric setting, the singer’s use of silence and darkness, and the growing sense that Gretchen is trapped in some kind of waking nightmare. Where logic doesn’t quite apply. The belated involvement of a former police officer named Henry (Jan Bluthard) investigating his wife’s death eventually leads to the unraveling of the mystery – which only partially happens.
While the film’s third act is more action-oriented – as an injured Gretchen teams up with Henry and goes to rescue a character she previously showed little concern for – the explanation of what’s going on in the hotel, its surroundings, and the nearby medical lab that Herr Koenig is involved in is frustratingly slow. remains opaque. Without spoiling anything, it ties in with the film’s titular bird, but in a way that’s still unclear. As we said before, not everything has to be clear in the film; In fact, when it comes to horror, the lack of a clear rationale for the story’s events or threats behind them often makes the narrative more terrifying.
But the singer keeps the whole secret of ‘Cuckoo’ out of reach, which doesn’t work as the film moves from atmospheric slow fire to a wild-and-reckless homestretch. The movie piles an accelerating stream of weird moments on top of what we’ve already seen, yet none of it comes together in a way that quite makes sense. The result is still a fun, terrifying ride, but lacking a satisfying resolution.
the cast
Hunter Shaffer in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
Without seeing ‘Euphoria’, we can only see our recent experiences with Hunter Shaffer on the big screen, and ‘Cuckoo’ shows him as a confident, fearless actor with plenty of presence and emotional weight. Gretchen surfs a full range of reactions and emotions here, from grief to loneliness to rebellion to terror, and pulls them off while keeping Schaeffer’s character grounded, intelligent, and sympathetic. It’s an impressive lead performance that bodes well for Shaffer’s future beyond her breakout work in ‘Euphoria.’
Opposite him is the great Dan Stevens, who is having a hell of a year between ‘Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire’ and ‘Abigail’. A resourceful, expansive, and chameleon-like actor, Stevens plays Herr Koenig with a nice mix of low-key authority and delightful swagger, gradually making the performance bigger as the story moves in unfamiliar directions. Like Schaefer, he is (and has been for some time) a compelling presence onscreen, and he’s uniquely suited to playing charming villains with outrageous accents. Although he’s in some ways hampered by his character (badly, shall we say) in explaining what’s going on in his pastoral little kingdom, Stevens continues to deliver what has become the strongest of his under-the-radar acting debuts.
The rest of the cast is small and relatively unknown, but our only disappointment is that Jessica Henwick – so great in ‘Iron Fist’, ‘The Matrix Resurrections’, ‘Glass Onion’ and ‘The Royal Hotel’ – is underused here. Gretchen’s stepmother is Beth.
final thought
Dan Stevens in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
‘Cuckoo’ takes its cues from 70s and 80s horror movies, particularly indie and/or European efforts like David Cronenberg’s ‘The Brood’ (great Cronenberg strength here), Dario Argento’s ‘Phenomena’, Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Dawn’ . t Look Now,’ and George Grau’s ‘Let Sleeping Corpse Lie’. All of these films operate in a territory that oscillates between realism and nightmare, an aesthetic clearly influenced by and successfully channeled by Tillman Singer.
But that atmosphere can only take you so far, and Singer’s surreal story vibe, genuinely unsettling imagery (such as the scene where Gretchen is chased on her bike) and dense atmosphere lead to a climax that’s more confusing than overwhelming. , the film’s terror and camp booze with a bang. Maybe that’s where he wants his movie’s strange bird to finally land, but as a result ‘Cuckoo’ doesn’t quite hold the terrifying heights it aims to hold.
‘Cuckoo’ gets 7 out of 10 stars.
“Fear its call.”
57
1 hour 43 minutesAugust 2, 2024
Showtimes and tickets
After unwittingly moving to the German Alps with her father and his new family, Gretchen discovers that their new town hides sinister secrets, as she is plagued by… Read the plot
What is the plot of ‘Cuckoo’?
After unwittingly moving to the German Alps with her father (Merton Sokas) and his new family, Gretchen (Hunter Schaffer) discovers that their new town hides terrible secrets, as she is plagued by strange noises and is followed by the frightening apparitions of a woman.
Who is in the cast of ‘Cuckoo’?
- Hunter Shaffer as Gretchen
- Dan Stevens as Mr. Koenig
- Jessica Henwick as Beth
- Marton Sokas as Lewis
Dan Stevens in ‘Cuckoo’. Photo: Neon.
