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DIRECTED BY: Tilman Singer
FEATURING: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jan Bluthardt, Mila Lieu
PLOT: Her family’s relocation to an alpine resort induces Gretchen to boredom—then terror—as strange sights and sounds crescendo in the woods.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: “Well, that’s definitely an Apocrypha candidate, if I may say so!” — Nina Martin, festival-attendee and film scholar.
COMMENTS: Tilman Singer, mein guter Herr, it has been too long. Six years, in fact, since I had the pleasure of catching his feature debut Luz at Fantasia. For Cuckoo, Singer was upgraded to the big auditorium, and the film played for an enthusiastic crowd, without an empty seat in the house. His sophomore effort is an exciting work, but one with something uncomfortable hanging over it.
There is discomfort in the story, naturally. Young Gretchen (an amazing Hunter Schafer) places the viewer squarely in her corner: late-teenage years are bad enough without having to move to some 1970s alpine resort throw-back with your architect father, his new wife, and a new half-sister. Worse still, the hotel owner falls squarely (and immediately) into that creepy-civility found so often in the genre, shticking from the get-go with his archaic-Euro-hipster duds and closely cropped beard. Herr Koenig (Dan Stevens) hits all the right notes for a man that is obviously up to something sinister, but whose words and tone are taken at face value by easily-impressed adults.
This sinister is hinted at in the opening scene, even before the resort, and has much to do with sound. Sound was clearly important in Luz, and here Singer goes all-out with the foley design, bringing door slams into sharp prominence from silence, alternating music-slathered muffles in headphones with the stripped acoustics of the surroundings, and most impressively, accompanying the high shriek of the resort’s woodland entities with a deadly thump of bass, disorienting the listener to the point where time itself skips and loops. As a delightful bonus, Luz veteran Jan Bluthardt plays a detective in Cuckoo: the only character who knows what is going on who is not also a part of the conspiracy.
The “uncomfortable thing” must be addressed, though. As Cuckoo is a much larger production than Luz, it involved compromises with its financial backers. The film’s first half feels like untethered Singer, as disorientation and disquieting mystery are stacked high and unwieldy. (Delightfully so, I should clarify.) The second half, for better or worse, feels like an exercise in tying things together in something of a sensible manner. Various parties I’ve conferred with regret this anchoring, and I largely concede their point: as a general rule, I want a filmmaker to go as full-tilt as their imagination and ability can take them. But I consider Cuckoo‘s conclusion more than capable, and sufficiently saturated with Singer’s sorcery. Gretchen’s alpine ordeal is alive with the sound of mayhem.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
