Recently in the Fantasia 2024 festival, we had the chance to see “Cuckoo”, the new film written and directed by Tilman Singer, and that is also one of the most awaited films of 2024. While some people are expecting a psychological thriller that seems to deal with paranoia and conspiracies, I was glad to see that it’s something bigger and way better than that.
The story starts when Gretchen, an American teenager who has to move with her father and his second family into a new house in the secluded woods of the Bavarian Alps. Just after arriving, Gretchen is offered a job at a resort that it’s owned by Herr König, a very charismatic and rich man who has hired Gretchen’s father (and her stepmother) to develop a new building in the area.
The job itself is not very demanding, but Gretchen finds some of the instructions she gets regarding the resort very odd, one of them being to make sure that she closes the reception office at 10 PM and to never wander in the woods in her bike that late at night.
After a weird day at work, and being the rebellious young adult that she is, Gretchen decides to go home on her bike, riding the woods at night as she was told not to do. This results in her being chased on the road by a strange woman with apparently very violent intentions, which causes Gretchen to suffer an accident. The police doesn’t seem to not believe her statement, since nobody saw said woman, nor heard the strange screech that Gretchen claimed that woman was making.
Seeing that her father is more concerned for the youngest daughter (and Gretchen’s step-sister) Alma, since she had a strange episode of epilepsy earlier that day, Gretchen decides to run away to Paris with Ed, a flirtatious young woman who was staying at the resort. This plan is cut short when the menacing mysterious woman from the other night reappears and causes a new accident.
Now seriously injured with no support from her father and no one believing her about the screaming woman who attacked her, Gretchen starts an uneasy alliance with a detective who is convinced that König knows more of this than is letting on and that those attacks were not imaginary nor the last ones.
This movie is very good. I think the trailer did a good job at keeping the plot very vague. While the trailer (and the title) might suggest that this is a movie about a girl losing her mind with hallucinations and who is being deceived for some sinister purposes. I can assure you that this is not it.
It’s not that simple or generic. This is a way better story, and more original than that.
I will not go into spoilers, but this is a movie that always kept my attention and works very well on several levels. The pace is never slow, nor dwells too much in exposition.
Gretchen is at moments the archetypal troubled, rebellious teenager who does not get along with her stepmother (nor tries to, to be fair) but also most of the time you see that she is fair (if not kind) to her stepsister. We can empathize more with her once we see she is dealing with a very heavy loss, and that living with her father does not help her situation at all (Mostly because we see he is very easily manipulated by either his boss or his new wife). To make matters worse, there are chances that she is being targeted by a monster that lives in the woods and nobody else has seen it.
There are several scary moments in this movie, some are reinforced by very interesting sound effects. The downside is that sometimes the noise can be very loud and high-pitched that if you are watching this film with headphones, you will feel some pain.
While you can adjust the volume in some scenes, there are moments where the dialogue is delivered either too fast or almost muted and this constant adjusting in the volume can be annoying. I guess it will play better in a theater, and I will say it right now, I definitely recommend seeing this in theaters.
Overall the acting is good, but hands down Dan Stevens does the best performance here. His portrayal of König was great, he is as charming as he is scary.
The special effects are very good, although scarce.
The screaming woman has a very good design, and I loved the whole concept about her.
There are some questions I felt were left unanswered, and sadly I don’t think this is the kind of film that could get a sequel, still, it has a very solid story as it is.
I am sure this film will be well received when it gets a general release. I was a fan of “Luz”, a previous film from Tilman Singer released in 2018, and I am very interested to see what he will do next.
And I will be reviewing more films doing our remote coverage, so stay tuned!
