Cuckoo is the latest by Tilman Singer (Luz) who’s back with his first English language feature length film, whose trailer you’ve no doubt you’ve seen if you caught Longlegs. To say I was intrigued by what I saw would be an understatement, and I was equally excited when I heard the film would be screening at Fantasia where I caught it.
The film stars Euphoria breakout Hunter Schafer as Gretchen, a prickly queer 17 year old who is forced to move to rural Germany with her father’s new family and their young mute daughter after the death of her mother. Looking to get out of the house she takes a gig at the local resort run by an eccentric Dan Stevens and it doesn’t take long for Gretchen to notice something weird is going on. One night she is attacked coming home by a strange woman and no one believes her, and rather than stick around she decides to high tail it out of there robbing the resort, which leads her down a fantastical genre mish-mash of a rabbit hole.
The film uses its body snatcher and body horror underpinnings to dig into the hell of being a teenager to remarkable effect. Former model Schafer goes mega awkward for the role, and is quite believable in her surly teen take, which has her racking up various injuries, bandages and slings throughout the film, via her various attacks and mishaps. These were a pretty great representation of not only the clumsiness and carelessness of youth, but the metaphorical blows and scars dealt out and left on the teens for the consequences of terrible choices one makes growing up. Thematically there’s also some added layers of nuance and dread dealt out in her moments of peril, because a young woman who no one believes is getting attacked time and time again.
To soften this particular narrative edge we have a scene stealing Dan Stevens as the antagonist, who’s chewing the scenery around her with a thick German accent as the embodiment of the German dictator every teen likens their parents to. Its rather quickly clear he’s the baddie, because he is just having such a great time embodying this character.
Another thing I adored was the overall look and production design of Cuckoo, with its gorgeous mid-century aesthetic that presents itself in the locations, cars and costumes. It’s a less pretentious, but equally impressive Wes Anderson level attention to detail, that felt encompassing, and strangely authentic to the strange world of Cuckoo. The film also oddly has a Jurassic Park vibe going through it that ties into not only some of the big swings, but also the costume choices and some of the scenes in the film. It’s downright bizarre, but it’s one of those things once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Neon is simply on a roll this year. First Longlegs and now Cuckoo, which definitely is a bit more of a crowd pleaser than the previous film, in a more more traditional, yet less traditional way. I loved the way Cuckoo masterfully utilized these high concept ideas, to not just scare and entertain, but toy with these bigger themes of gender identity, queerness, rebellion and even death. By doing so it allows this dense sci-fi coming of age story to resonate with so many folks on so many levels, even those that may not have been looking for any of the above just yet but soon will.
