Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo keeps its cool and its distance, but beneath the surface, there’s a fairy tale lushness to its horror:
A girl on the cusp of adulthood loses her mother. She passes into the hands of her father and stepmother, who are much more interested in their own peculiar child: a mute little girl conceived under exceptional circumstances, as if someone has wished for her after seeing blood drops on snow on a black window sill. Something is not quite right here. There is an enigmatic stranger, both courteous and dangerous—then a second stranger, less courteous but not necessarily less dangerous. They’re Beasts and Bluebeards. Otherworldly women, witches in search of children, flit through the narrative; motherhood and love are intense risks, gambles that may not pay off. And it’s all happening in the bucolic Bavarian Alps.
Cuckoo makes a clever move in having all this be science fiction instead. It has the rhythms—and abrupt dead ends—of a folklore, but its genre switch estranges what is deeply, primally familiar. Instead of magical deals, brood parasitism. It’s an intriguing, thought-provoking turn.
Unfortunately, the story then makes more logical sense at the expense of its emotional sense: it loses its resonance and becomes only clever, disorienting but not disturbing. A great film could be both, but Cuckoo is, alas, only good. It’s not long, but it feels that way—how many times do we need to see the rapid vibration of a cuckoo’s throat?—and it loses specificity and clarity as it goes. As polished as most of it is, it comes dangerously close to being forgettable.
But Cuckoo does save itself, and I’ll remember it for more than its genre subversion. A big part of that is down to two key performances. Hunter Schafer (as Gretchen, our half-orphaned teen girl struggling through the brambles of the plot) and Dan Stevens (as the sinister Herr König, resort owner and “preservationist”) turn in strong performances that are precisely calibrated for both the film’s fairy tale roots and its modern, off-kilter setting. Schafer is luminous and bratty at once, a plausibly traumatized and grieving teenager who still has sulks and growing pains—and who, despite her vulnerability, is capable of immense, heroic commitment to moving forward and saving innocence when she recognizes it. Stevens, in his less nuanced part, is just obviously having a ball. Dan Stevens strikes me as someone who has always wanted to play a menacing weirdo with a fake accent, and everything here suggests that the guy is living his dream. Best of all, he creates a real sense of threat beneath the fun, a danger that is perversely camouflaged and amplified by the fun, like he’s a pantomime villain with real blood spattered on his shoes.
Beyond that, Cuckoo also achieves the ideal saving grace of lukewarm horror movies: it has at least one really, really good scare. There’s a scene where Gretchen is riding her bicycle through the dark, in and out of patches of available light, and we see her shadow racing beside her … and then a hint of something else, with a sound that doesn’t seem to belong. And then ….
That bike-riding scene alone keeps this movie memorable all on its own. Add in Schafer and Stevens’s performances, and you have a solid movie that I couldn’t possibly pan. Still, something is missing. It goes for the heart-strings without ever feeling like it has any heart of its own. I wouldn’t go so far as to kick it out of the nest, but I’m kicking it off the watchlist. One and done.
Cuckoo is streaming on Hulu.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
Dan Duryea gets a shave and a second chance.
Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season One, Episode Eight, “Blowback”
This is probably the best episode of the first season – the one where all the writer’s different goals and instincts come together at once. One minor aspect is that the genre savviness has been used, not for clever conversation, but for escalating the plot; Cal, the prisoner, is fully aware of all the cliches and will respond to none of them – it’s such a great moment when he reveals Simone isn’t a girl, it’s the surname of the first man he killed. The plot kind of reminds me of the adage that talk therapy is bad for sociopaths because it just gives them more tools to manipulate people with, as well as the way that the right-wing has co-opted progressive language; Cal has survived long enough to see the cliches and use them against his antagonist.
This ends up drilling down to a fundamental truth, and indeed a profound insight into Raylan specifically: he knows that for most of these guys, all they have left is face, and they will do anything to preserve that. A lesser cop (especially a lesser fictional cop) would try and destroy that; Raylan cares much more about not letting anyone die. This also points to why the show is so good; when a bad guy dies or goes to jail on Criminal Minds or Law & Order: SVU, it’s maybe comforting but never shocking and definitely not triumphant. On this show, every once in a while, everybody lives. There are some things more important than owning someone who deserves it. Hell, that ties into the final argument Raylan successfully uses, which ends up being the essence of drama: don’t you want to know how this will turn out?
The way this interweaves into Raylan’s plot about Tommy Bucks is so good as well – Vasquez lets him know that he could kill Cal and it wouldn’t at all count against him in the investigation, but Raylan doesn’t want that. And Raylan is coming down off the high, thinks the interview will be a breeze by comparison, and then discovers Vasquez isn’t going to make it easy on him, and indeed has a few good points.
It’s the fascinating thing about Raylan – in the moment, he’s a very rational actor, but he wavers terribly in the direction he plans on going, banging Ava even though that’s incredibly stupid and confronting Boyd after explicitly being told not to. He’s tactically brilliant but strategically weak. I think an ironic thing about life is that you have to rely on emotion for determining your long-term direction and logic for immediate surroundings, and Raylan is great at the latter and fucked at the former. The fascinating thing is that Raylan is so good at his job specifically because of how emotionally detached he is from it.
A little less interesting is how this ties into Winona and Gary’s plot, where he’s clearly also trying to save face as it becomes clear he’s made a stupid decision. It’s not actively bad but it’s not terribly interesting either.
Bo Crowder shows up in this episode, and MC Gainey is magnificent in it – reminds me of stuff Nath has said about Southern paternalism, all good manners and sadism. Gainey is in complete control of himself, switching on a dime from enraged to pleasant. This is a guy who’s never done anything he didn’t want to. Also, we get three separate That Guys introduced here – W Earl Brown as Cal, Frederich Lehn as the main TAC guy, and and Jere Burns as the guy strongarming Gary.
Biggest Laugh: Tim requisitioning some guy’s fried chicken is hilarious, even as it comes off very ACAB, but it ends up beaten out when he shows up and Raylan asks for bourbon (“You didn’t say shit about bourbon.”).
Top Ownage: Difficult pick here, in an episode about avoiding violence, so I have to go with something verbal: “Plus, I’ve always had a problem with authority figures!”
FX continues its pattern of having banger S1 episodes called “Blowback”! This is also one of my favorites of the season: I love how pragmatic and practical Raylan’s negotiation is, with the idea of seizing and enjoying momentary pleasures.
Vasquez is one of my favorite supporting characters the show ever does, and there’s a lot of stiff competition there.
At this point, I’m collecting episode titles to use in case I ever make a TV show.
Gary is such a perfect oily shithead, the loser who thinks he’s entitled to success and is pathetically in denial about the consequences of his actions.
That’s not just “the guy,” that’s Wynn Duffy. I guess this story continues in the next episode so you’ll learn more soon enough.
I don’t exactly remember saying that, but I do say a lot of smart and accurate things, so I’ll take your word for it.
It’s originally from when you were talking about True Detective and particularly Marty’s sense of outrageous entitlement, and it’s come up a few other times when talking about the South.
Stormy Monday – Mike Figgis’s first feature, and the promise of a career that has hit at least a few heights is here. A moody, atmospheric, and romantic neo-noir set in Figgis’s hometown of Newcastle-on-Tyne, it takes advantage of the city’s waterfront and bridges to create an engaging dark vibe. The cast features Sean Bean opposite Melanie Griffith with just the right level of spark and emotional connection, Tommy Lee Jones as the crooked American businessman trying to muscle into the decaying city, and Sting (also a native of Newcastle) as a local nightclub owner who hires Bean and who squares off with Jones. The plot is wobbly and to some degree there’s not much here we haven’t seen before, but it’s all strung together very well. Oh,. and did I mention Roger Deakins was DP here and that this is apparently the film that caught the Coen Brothers’ attention?
Kojak, “Black Thorn” – Rosey Grier is back as jovial bounty hunter Salathiel Harms, and the plot is as convoluted as last time. Something about a hit man hired to killed a special prosecutor and drug dealers. Well, they can’t all be winners. Guests include Danny Aiello, Swoosie Kurtz, Leonardo Cimino, and soap opera regular John Reilly.
Swallow – This would fit in as a Streaming Shuffler (and maybe it was featured under the column’s previous name?) A young bride begins rebelling against her life of domestic imprisonment by swallowing objects that ought not be swallowed. A marble, a safety pin, a tack – all get gulped in nerve-tingling shots and displayed on her dresser after getting pooped back out. Director Carlo Mirabella-Davis has a fondness for giallo-lite lighting, but shoots the swallowing with appropriate frankness that makes it more tangible than metaphor. And her husband and his wealthy family deal with it in daylight (though the light may be filtered through blue and magenta gels), diagnosing her with pica and getting her professional help. Of course most of the concern is for her unborn heir to their fortune, and all of the professional help is on the payroll to surveil and report her every move.
Swallow is ultimately undone by its brittle indie trappings, gently dropping lighting and editing cues inspired by brasher sources but staying content on the domestic drama side of the equation. A final confrontation has a charge and catharsis missing from the rest of the movie but also feels a bit disconnected from what came before. A movie with sharper edges might risk getting spat out, but this shouldn’t have gone down quite so easy.
I do specifically recall Lauren writing this one up and coming to similar conclusions.
It was supposed to be today’s streaming shuffle but a Cuckoo stole its nest.
#hellyeah #birdjokes
Unfortunately I cannot see that title without thinking of Alan Partridge’s local-detective series pitch where the main character is clearly supposed to be a cooler version of himself.
deli boys. . It’s growing on me. BJ’s running bit about infiltrating J6 groups kills me every time. “I was the best man one of their weddings. I slept with a bridesmaid. We dated for 3 months. [wistfully] Chelsea…”
They also had some solid humor about India-Pakistan with immigrants from the same generation as partition having some strong words, while the American-born children scold them. There’s a very fine line here, and I think we’ve learned that no matter how careful you are someone somewhere will appreciate ironic racism in a non-ironic way (this is why I can live with losing the blackface episodes of IASIP and the Jon Hamm “Banjo” 30 rock). It also works on the knowledge the show’s primarily south asian cast is clearly in on the joke, and it’s also about old folks not being able to let go of grudges from the old country no matter how long they’ve been here.*
the great north Some very solid gags this episode with Wolf trying to prove he is not a weirdo who eats worms. The problem with proving you’re not weird is that you can’t and that’s how things go for wolf.
*super tangentially it’s always interesting to me how these things play out in different communities.
**Unfortunately the partition humor is maybe a little timelier and darker than when the show premiered way back in 6 weeks ago.
Ha, I haven’t seen the latest episode yet, but also, yeah, Wolf is weird, so, uh, good luck with that one, buddy.
Somehow I watched this one without logging my thoughts on Letterboxd, in which case can I really be said to have watched it at all? Anyway, this is a good description of my memory of it, though I think I came to the same conclusion from the opposite way – I found the early going pretty tedious and the back portion more exciting, possibly because I had given up that these characters were going to ever get to be all the compelling.
Gretchen using the earbuds in the chase scene to outfox the cuckoo was a clever highlight of the last act for me, I think, but yeah, at that point I could appreciate some of the excitement intellectually but was also just getting bored. And likewise uncompelled.
Year of the Month update!
May’s year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 2nd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Moon Pilot
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
And coming in June, we’ll be moving on to 1983, including all these movies, albums, books, et al!
Jun. 9th: Sam Scott: El Sur
Jun. 23rd: Sam Scott: Codex Seraphianus