Fright or Flight

In horror-thriller ‘Cuckoo,’ Hunter Schafer is superb as a hotel resident menaced by the sinister proprietor

Cuckoo

Director Tilman Singer Screenwriter Tilman Singer Cast Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Marton Csokas Distributor Neon

With “Cuckoo,” German director Tilman Singer expands on the scope of his impressive 2018 debut (demonic-possession-meets-therapeutic-improv exercise “Luz”) while retaining that film’s bird-flipping attitude toward niceties like coherent plotting or narrative logic. Singer makes what ought to be his breakthrough with “Cuckoo,” an outlandish fusion of stylish atmospherics, old-school reproductive horror and pro-switchblade advertorial. The profile of this highly enjoyable, unashamedly convoluted creepfest will be further raised by “Euphoria” star Hunter Schafer’s terrific Final Girl performance and by Dan Stevens’ hilariously eccentric villain. Few are the films and fewer are the actors who can get such sinister mileage out of a character’s insistently Teutonic, semi-sibilant mispronunciation of the name “Gretchen.”

Gretchen (Schafer) appears, initially, to be the cuckoo. She is sent to live with her estranged father, Luis (Marton Csokas), his second wife Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their 8-year-old mute daughter, Alma (Mila Lieu), just as they are decamping to a Bavarian Alpine resort. Gretchen is surly and homesick for the U.S., and for the mother she often telephones but who never picks up her calls. Luis and Beth spent their honeymoon here years ago and became friendly with the resort’s wealthy and obviously insane owner, Herr König (Stevens) — a character so pristinely macabre that he could only have been written by a German with a finely honed instinct for how the rest of the world tends to caricature his countrymen. And now König has hired the couple to redesign the facility. Or at least that is his pretext for bringing them here.

Almost as soon as the family arrives, weird stuff starts to go down. Most of it is centered on Gretchen, who seems increasingly hysterical to Luis and Beth, even as her encounters with a mysterious, malevolent screeching woman proliferate into bruises and bandages, splints and slings. When Alma suddenly develops epileptic seizure symptoms, the unsmiling doctor (Proschat Madani) at the handy but ill-defined on-site medical complex wonders if the family has recently experienced a traumatic event. All eyes swing inevitably to Gretchen. No wonder she tries to run away with attractive hotel guest Ed (Àstrid Bergès-frisbey). Unfortunately for the would-be lesbian lovers on the run, the screaming lady — whose raspy yowl ensnares the listener in a juddering time loop — has other ideas.

Given the revelations about Gretchen’s mother and about Alma’s conception — a secret far worse than her merely having absorbed her twin in the womb — “Cuckoo” loosely fits within the motherhood or grief-horror subgenres. But despite Paul Faltz’s mordantly elegant cinematography and the nice line in 1980s-style synth scoring from Simon Waskow, Singer doesn’t have anything so conceptual or “elevated” on his mind.

Perverse Dr. Moreau-style genetic experimentation, copious vomiting, the spewing of some sort of pregnancy-inducing ectoplasmic goop — not to mention straggle-haired pheromonal teenagers and a locale that incorporates both the classic Overlook-style remote mountain hotel and more than one nefarious-looking cabin in the woods, “Cuckoo” has all of it, explains none of it and still has time to spend with König, as he produces a little flute from his pocket and starts playing it like a latter-day Pied Piper.

To which we can only say: Stay weird, man. The only thing to fear (aside from some resurrected mythic species being Frankensteined into a family member at the whim of a rich German madman) is that when Singer’s inevitable call-up to the Hollywood big leagues happens, he doesn’t go getting all sane.

Tilman Singer makes what ought to be his breakthrough with ‘Cuckoo,’ an outlandish fusion of stylish atmospherics and old-school reproductive horror.