Cuckoo
Mark White
Replacement is a strange concept. The act of assigning value, meaning, hierarchy, or otherwise onto something – or someone – over another thing or another someone is a purely human act of psychology, creating everything from economic growth and social order right down to actual psychological fear. The idea that something or someone better – and that term could be defined in any way at all – can come along and take away our role, our place, our home, our purpose… our identity is a terrifying one indeed; it is this terrifying idea that is explored in the most nightmarish possible way in Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo.
Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is a seemingly ‘average’ teenager caught in the middle of a move from her home to a new place with her family: moody, perpetually forlorn, keeps her family at arm’s length most of the time, preoccupied with anything to do with the present. Her parents – her father and step-mother (Márton Csókás and Jessica Henwick) – are working for the eerily charming Dr. König (Dan Stevens), helping to design and plan a new division of his rehabilitation and hotel compound nestled in the Bavarian Alps. Gretchen’s young half-sister Alma occupies the remaining free time of the parents; Alma is mute – and very precocious – and seemingly the child that the family cares about more these days. Upon arrival, Dr. König and his compatriots seem surprised that Gretchen is with the family…almost as if her presence is unplanned for and potentially problematic. Dr. König gets Gretchen a job at the front desk of the hotel to occupy her time, but as Gretchen works her shifts – eager to earn some money and return to her mother’s home back in the U.S. – she starts to notice strange things happening: changes in activity after 10 pm, patients acting confused and vomiting in the lobby. But after a freakish attack by a mysterious, blonde woman in a trench coat with glowing red retinas and an interrogation from an intense policeman, Gretchen begins to lose her grip on her identity as she questions just how safe she and her family are in the supposed tranquility of the Alpine resort.
Cuckoo tackles questions of identity by using the titular bird’s famous breeding trait as a creative horror concept…any more details than that would spoil much of the film itself. But the very idea of a foreign ‘agent’ or entity inserting its own offspring into another family or nest and the paranoia and uncertainty that comes with that is potent. In the mind of a teenager already feeling displaced and undefined, it becomes an overwhelming emotional cage in which Gretchen feels consistently trapped. She lashes out at her father over harsh realities, makes brash choices (classic teenage angst) that lead to trouble and danger, and voices her own insecurities as resentment of Alma to anyone who will listen. Sonically shrill, murderous women in trench coats only add devious and unsettling horror to the emotional distress of Gretchen’s terminal adolescence and dire need to feel some semblance of identity.
Speaking of distress, Schafer’s performance as the jaded and dejected teenager turned ‘final girl’ is everything and more. Gretchen’s journey in the film requires everything from awkward teenage sexual awakening to surviving grievous bodily injury in the midst of a chase from the terrifying blonde in the trench coat; Schafer commits to every scene – all the horror, all the emotional revelations – and makes Gretchen’s teenage angst and terror incredibly real. Balancing out the performance of Schafer’s Gretchen as the heroine is Dan Steven’s Dr. König, whose perfect German (and Germanic accent) only adds to the congenial artifice of a man who claims to be looking to do good but has ulterior motives that draw out questions of the deep-seated instincts for human survival and just when and how parasitic relationships between parents and children need to be ended for the sake of everyone. Stevens exudes a cool – at times very ‘sanitized’ – bedside manner as König’s only personality trait so well that it is deliciously unnerving when his true nature is exposed as the film reaches its climax.
Singer’s cinematic fever dream - replete with time loops, bizarre retina reflections in blonde wigs, and Dan Steven’s eerily perfect German - is the other major horror event of the summer.
Visually, the film is a blur of styles and references. Set design elements, the color palette, the clothing – especially of the terrifying blonde trench coats – all feels incredibly dated and of the late 1970s; even the title card superimposed over the film in the very beginning feels like the film somehow is a lost piece uncovered from some drive in theaters’ closing down. But Gretchen has an iPhone and people leave voice mail…so the exact time period is vague and familiar all at once. All of the film’s physical set design seems boxed into tight spaces; from hospital room after hospital room, hotel rooms, even the new home Gretchen and her family move into, there is an ominous sense of close quarter observation, and the notion that Gretchen’s free space is gradually diminishing.
The editing is also wonderfully used to add to the paranoia and confusion of them film’s boxed spaces; one of the recurring features of the attacks from the blonde trench coats is that those caught in their ‘sonic blasts’ are rendered catatonic and living a consistent loop of their last actions or thoughts. One sequence of looped time is exquisite, as not only does it add to the tension of what is an impending accident, but uses tight close ups and Schafer’s facial cues to show us that Gretchen realizes something is wrong as she lives the moment over and over again, making the tension so dense it crashes on screen at just the right moment.
Sadly, as is often the case with madhouse horror films like this, full exposition and explanation is never given to the why and the when of the horror being presented, but just enough of the the what and the how to further mystify and disturb the audience in its recoiling at the truth. Singer’s film is a fever dream built to lock the audience into a very specific kind of paranoia and loneliness, and then expose our fear to the distorted metaphors of identity and replacement to really get under our skin; in Cuckoo, people can be replaced and supplanted without even being aware its happening, and as creatures that crave homeostasis and self-actualization, the thought of being forgotten, replaced, minimized, or reduced can be devastating.
If a bizarre woman with red eyes and hypnotic scream is the one doing it, its scary. But what about when those who are supposed to love you most do it? Singer suggests it is a part of growing up and finding one’s own identity away from the home – or nest – that makes us stronger. But the fear of that minimized existence lingers even as we start our own families and live our own lives, and Singer hints as to the reasons why. Just beware blonde women in trench coats…
Final Thought
Between this and LONGLEGS, arthouse horror has had one helluva summer. Glory be to The Man Downstairs!