Cuckoo

I'm always excited when a filmmaker not only chooses to shoot on 35mm but can swing a limited 35mm release for their picture, but I'm frustrated that the only audiences that seem to appreciate that effort enough these days are horror fans. This is because, outside of major releases by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, the only type of movies that typically merit celluloid presentations these days are little genre indies like Tilman Singer's Cuckoo, which use the format as if it was an Instagram filter. Singer is a German filmmaker who made a splash with his supernatural homage to European horror movies of the 1980s Luz, a film school thesis project that scored a major theatrical release. Singer is all about creating images and sequences that look cool and creepy, but he seems to have missed what made so many of the open-ended horror mysteries he's inspired by so effective. Instead of luring viewers into a strange world and leaving us stranded there to figure things out for ourselves, Cuckoo drops us into its overtly bizarre setting, cranks the weirdness up to eleven, and then bores the hell out of us by explaining everything until there's nothing chillingly enigmatic left at all.

Hunter Schafer stars as Gretchen, a sullen teen who, after her mother's death, moves with her father (Marton Csokas) and stepmother (Jessica Henwick) to a strange resort in the Bavarian Alps that they plan to help run. Schafer is still grieving her mother's death (this is a contemporary horror film, after all, so it's about grief and loss) and isn't happy about reuniting with her estranged father and a stepmom who clearly resents her presence. Her little half-sister, Alma (Mila Lieu), is a mute girl troubled by unexplained seizures who gets the bulk of her parent's attention. Installed at the front desk of the hotel during the off-season by its creepy proprietor (Dan Stevens), Gretchen bears witness to several happenings and is quickly swept up into the mysterious experiments undertaken in the facility.

What Gretchen discovers about the goings on at this virtually deserted vacationland is somewhat compelling and original. Most of it comes across via the loud, unsettling noises, uncanny human forms seen from a distance, and jump-scares that constitute most low-budget horror movies of the past couple of decades. There's a reason these tropes are so consistent: they work. And, just like in Luz, Singer has devised some cool spins on familiar ideas and images. But unlike that 70-minute student film, the innovative creepiness starts to become monotonous by the midpoint of this 103-minute feature. Singer's ability to get under our skin decreases each time a shot, sound effect, or surprise is repeated (and they are repeated a lot). Since he spends little time patiently setting up the environment and forgoes properly establishing the geography of the location (another vital aspect of horror filmmaking from earlier eras that contemporary imitators seem to neglect), when Singer starts to reveal the truth about the world he's envisioned, we don't care so much because we haven't been asking enough questions ourselves.

There's not enough of a sense of discovery in the first two-thirds of Cuckoo, and when the third act arrives and explains everything for us, the results play as comical rather than frightening. Much that happens is difficult to take seriously because, like so many modern filmmakers, Singer seems to operate under the false belief that if exposition is delivered during action sequences, it won't feel awkward and forced. Of course, the opposite is true. No matter how insane a villain is, nobody delivers lengthy explanatory speeches while punching or shooting at people in life-threatening situations. Shouting, loud noises, and intensifying tensions don't hide lousy dialogue; they make it seem all the more absurd. This is especially true when we don't actually need to know all the inner workings of a villain's plan for the movie to succeed, as with Cuckoo. This film would have been far more effective if we'd been left to draw a few of our own conclusions instead of having everything spelled out for us; we might have imagined something better.