JP Nunez
It wasn’t all that long ago that fans were wondering what Neon’s two mysterious 2024 horror movies, Longlegs and Cuckoo, would be about. The company was playing their cards close to the chest with these titles, and that marketing strategy seems to have worked. It helped make Longlegs a surprisingly big hit, and while we’ll have to wait a few days to get a feel for how Cuckoo is doing at the box office, anticipation for the film has been pretty high in the horror community. We’ve all been counting down the days until its release, and I’m no exception. I’ve been dying to see this movie just like everyone else, so as soon as I heard that tickets were on sale, I snatched up a spot at the earliest screening I could find.
Cuckoo was written and directed by Tilman Singer, and it stars Hunter Schafer, Mila Lieu, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick, and Dan Stevens. In the film, Gretchen is a lonely American teenager who just lost her mother, and she’s moving to a resort in the German Alps with her father, his new wife, and their mute daughter. Soon after they arrive, Gretchen is given a job by Mr. König, the head honcho at the resort, but something isn’t quite right.
She begins to experience odd, sometimes inexplicable phenomena, and one day, she’s attacked by a strange woman she’s never met. Surprisingly, the poor girl’s family doesn’t take her story seriously, but she soon meets a police officer who says he’s been investigating this mysterious woman. Together, the pair eventually uncover a dark secret involving Mr. König and Gretchen’s family, and it’s worse than either of them could’ve imagined.
Right from the get-go, Cuckoo had me completely mesmerized. Let’s start with the characters. All the performances in this movie are top-notch, so no matter what’s happening at the moment, it’s an absolute joy to watch these people go about their daily lives. But as always, there are a few standouts.
First and foremost, we have Gretchen. This girl is played by Hunter Schafer, and she’s the heart and soul of the film. When we first meet her, she has the typical teenage awkwardness you’d expect from almost any kid in her situation, and Schafer totally nails it. Then, as Cuckoo goes on, Gretchen hits just about every emotion you can think of, including a few genre mainstays like sadness, anger, and terror, and Schafer doesn’t miss a single beat.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there’s Mr. König, played brilliantly by Dan Stevens. This guy has the kind of soft-spoken, suave demeanor that should make him impossible to dislike, but Stevens also injects the character with a subtle creepiness that’ll make your skin crawl whenever he opens his mouth. It’s a tough balance to maintain, but unsurprisingly, Stevens pulls it off without breaking a sweat. Mr. König may not be the literal monster of the movie, but he’s still one of the best antagonists I’ve seen all year.
On top of those great characters, Cuckoo also features an utterly captivating horror mystery. It starts off slow, giving us just a few hints here and there that something isn’t quite right at this resort. Most notably, Gretchen sometimes gets stuck in brief time loops, and she often sees women throwing up in odd places, but there’s no explanation in sight.
You can’t help but wonder just what the hell is going on here, and when the mysterious woman starts stalking our lead character, the film gets even better. Some of these scenes are genuinely terrifying, and there’s one in particular that really grabbed my attention. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that it involves a bicycle, and writer/director Tilman Singer shows off some legit genre chops with his excellent use of sound and shadows.
From there, Cuckoo bides its time and lets you stew in your uncertainty for a bit, and when it finally pulls back the curtain, the film doesn’t lose an ounce of steam. Again, I can’t say much without giving away some of the movie’s surprises, but I can say that this is one of the rare cases where the payoff is just as good as the setup.
In fact, this film just gets better and better as it inches closer and closer to the thrilling finale, and when that finale comes, it’s everything I wanted it to be. It’s tense, it’s atmospheric, and the depth of this evil is genuinely surprising. From the bits and pieces I had heard about the movie, I had an idea of what Gretchen was really up against, but even I wasn’t expecting the story to play out the way it did.
Last but not least, I want to talk about the themes of Cuckoo. My frenemy and colleague Sean Parker said in his Fantasia review that the movie is “a giant metaphor for women’s reproductive rights and male-domineering autocracy,” but I disagree. Sure, you could see it that way, but nothing in the story requires or even suggests that interpretation over any others. In fact, the parallels with abortion are pretty superficial, so to see this film the way Sean does, you almost have to read that meaning into it.
Instead, I’d suggest that Cuckoo is primarily about family, especially motherhood. When the movie begins, Gretchen is unhappy with her current family situation, largely because she’s lost her mother, but by the end of it, she (mostly) remedies that problem in a really touching way. What’s more, there’s also a familial and motherly element to the monsters, so this is hands down the story’s most prominent theme.
On the flipside, I have to be honest, I don’t have any major criticisms of this film. Sure, there are a few things I can nitpick here and there, and I have some questions about how Mr. König’s operation really works, but in the grand scheme of things, none of that bothers me. Everything else about Cuckoo is so good I barely even noticed its flaws, so for my money, this is one of the best horror movies of 2024.
Cuckoo is playing in theaters right now.
