MIFF 2024 Film Review - Cuckoo

Images courtesy of Common State.

With complex, figurative ideas, eccentric leading performances, and a tense atmosphere, Cuckoo leads with promise. Set to the backdrop of the Bavarian Alps, the film looms with ominous unfamiliarity as Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a 17-year old begrudgingly living at her father’s (Marton Csokas) new resort, begins to suspect she is being followed by a mysterious stranger, and becomes embroiled in a family scandal at the hands of her father’s boss Herr König (Dan Stevens). 

Cuckoo’s promising start is underpinned by the film’s gloomy, dreamlike aesthetic. Capturing the alps with bursts of colour, high contrast, and soft lighting, director Tilman Singer and his DP Paul Faltz create a heightened sense of reality, paving way for Gretchen’s encounters with strange noises and visions of a trench-coated blonde woman to blur the lines between the rational and the inexplicable. The opening act’s reliance on visual storytelling creates a solid array of eerie imagery too, playing to a slow rhythm that is punctuated by sudden moments of violence, disturbance or fear. Unfortunately however, for every visual flourish or effective scare the film can muster, there is another that will appear jarring. To illustrate the strange noises that plague Gretchen, a digital stabilising effect shakes the screen, and unfortunately extinguishes the tension through its cheap presentation. Whilst this may seem like a minor misstep, the undoing of its visual precision is indicative of the film’s larger issue with executing its ideas after their setup.

From his first frame, Dan Stevens’ zany, German-accented performance as Herr König is immediately telegraphed as one with a sinister secret. It’s a fun, wicked performance that promises a big payoff, and seems to revel in the fact that the truth will be revealed rather than playing it for much shock value. As Gretchen’s disturbances with the woman in the trench coat become more severe, her father continues to disbelieve her, and König uses this to lay the groundwork to sow tension between the family. It is a shame then, that this boiling pot of suspense, atmosphere, and vague allusions to a grander plan  fizzles out as the film starts to explain itself. Visual storytelling is exchanged for cheap exposition, and its subsequent reveals walk a frustrating line between being too unsubtle and too vague.

Whilst the final act of the film overplays its hand, its frankly bizarre and confused setup thankfully allows Schafer’s performance to shine. Shifting between the quieter moments of empathy, to the louder, more expressionistic tones of fear is a delicate balancing act that Schafer deftly manoeuvres . It’s a film that survives off of the energy and interplay of her and Stevens’ performances, unsupported by the thematic mess of ideas by the film’s end. What starts as a taut and moody stalker thriller quickly takes a turn towards the supernatural, and unfortunately is not adept enough at handling its concepts confidently, losing nearly all of its steam. Schafer’s ability to bring intensity and sincerity to her performance does provide some inspiration, but it’s a mostly thankless effort as the film around her collapses under the weight of its own ideas, turning its early promise into an underdeveloped and middling affair.

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Cuckoo screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in cinemas and online August 8th-25th.

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