“Cuckoo” (2024) starts like an AITA Reddit post. Seventeen-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) moves to a mountain resort with her father, Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother, Beth (Jessica Henwick) and half-sister, mute Alma (Mila Lieu). The latter three are happily together in the sedan while Gretchen rides with the movers. Eight years ago, Luis and Beth, who are architects, designed the German Alps vacation spot, and they are back to work on expansion. Herr Konig (Dan Stevens) greets them and offers a job to Gretchen, but on her way home, The Hooded Woman (Kalin Morrow) attacks her. If Gretchen did not feel as if she belonged there before, her father confirms it by blaming Gretchen for Alma becoming ill and prioritizes tending to Alma over Gretchen. No one believes Gretchen’s account except for Henry (Jan Bluthardt), a fellow guest at the resort who claims that he is a cop who will protect her. Who can she trust to get out alive?
German writer and director Tilman Singer’s sophomore feature is a strong contender for best horror film of 2024. Gretchen is a great character: a forlorn, unloved and alone little girl on the threshold of becoming an adult without the judgment, but more discernment than her folks by figuring out that something is off at Alpschatten Resort before anyone in her family. She is not perfect. She seems disdainful of her possibly disabled sister and refuses to acknowledge their family status, but on occasion, she shows a sisterly bond, but when Alma starts acting strange, Gretchen seems less cruel and more perspicacious.
Dan Stevens is on a roll taking every strange character that he can get. It is his best performance of the year with his corrupt cop from “Abigail” (2024) coming in a close second, and though he was not the reason that “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” (2024) sucked, he just could not be weird enough to overcome that stinker of a film. As Konig, he seems sociable enough but acts as if he owns the place and everyone in it, and most people are unusually deferential to him. He walks right into Gretchen’s room and sits on her bed without being invited and without objection from the adults in her life, so it makes sense that Gretchen rejects his offer for a ride after work. She does not buy the protective schtick and prefers to maintain her independence, but she does not get rewarded for her troubles.
As “Cuckoo” unfolds, Gretchen’s injuries increase and carrying a switchblade seems to be of no use. The Hooded Woman is one of those figures that will be as memorable as The Shape, aka Michael Myers. She is unsettling and completely off. Here is where the body horror comes in. Even when Singer shows her completely, moviegoers will not stop registering all the features that just seem wrong. Her eyes seem to glow red. Her mouth seems unusually wide. And she seems to emit the strange noises in the area. Nicholas Cage in “Longlegs” (2024) has nothing on Morrow’s unnerving physical performance in the nightmarish way that she emerges and pursues Gretchen. Half the fun of the movie is putting together the pieces of this bizarre puzzle. Even if you get how it will come together early in the proceedings, watching the characters figure it out and still stumble is part of the movie’s charm. Plus if we have learned nothing from “The Walking Dead”—no she is not a zombie—sometimes the monster is not the real threat.
Unlike “The First Omen” (2024) which prioritized the message over the franchise until subtext became overt, the characters did not feel invented to serve the scenario, it still works as a straight horror sci-fi film, and it has a heart that does not feel tagged on to the denouement like an afterthought. Konig and Henry transcend initial impressions as villain and hero as Gretchen navigates not getting hijacked into their respective agendas and forge her own way. Without spoiling too much, “Cuckoo” feels like “The Stepford Wives” (1975) meets a demented episode of “Nature” involving cryptids. The surprise lies in the perfect resolution, which packs the same cathartic emotional punch as the end of “Serenity” (2005) and is thematically satisfying in a way that fellow Neon horror film “Longlegs” did not.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
It would be too reductive to simply say man equals bad, and woman equals good. There are more dimensions to “Cuckoo.” There are generational, speciesism, colonialist and queer readings that can be applied to the film. So if you watched this film and want to know what happened, Koenig and his crew allegedly discovered a species called the Homo-Cucildae who can only reproduce by using a human woman to carry its child, which a human man fertilizes by sleeping with the human woman. The Homo-Cucildae cannot speak but produces a voice that disrupts a human beings’ nervous system, which can render them paralyzed or experience deja-vu so they cannot run away. The human being feels as if they are trapped in a time and space loop so they cannot escape and the Homo-Cucidae can get close enough to hit the human female on the head so she is paralyzed and can be implanted with the other species’ eggs.
Koenig’s crew opens a resort, and none of the implanted women consented to the procedure, but the men did although it is ambiguous whether Henry was just a duped tourist or a willing participant who screwed up his end of the bargain. Even if not implanted, the stunned human female will puke, and someone needs to turn her on her side. This experiment has at least been going on for eight years, and Beth was an unwitting participant. Alma is a product of that program. Luis is the worst person in the universe because he probably did not leave his first wife, Olivia, after falling for Beth, but for Koenig’s mission and blames his older daughter for Alma going through a natural process. Initially he seems to want to protect Gretchen from Koenig, but he ultimately does not care and totally gaslights her into thinking that nothing strange is happening.
Koenig trains the Homo-Cucildae, i.e. The Hooded Woman, to disguise herself as human. Upon maturation, they stop looking convincingly human, lose their hair and exhibit more animalistic traits. Once exposed to an adult Homo-Cucildae’s cries, a young or adolescent Homo-Cucidae gets activated and begins to develop these traits thus the teenage girl (Matthea Lara Pedersen) in the beginning of “Cuckoo” and Alma having seizure and ear twitches. The surrogate human mother gets physically and psychologically ill during this transition thus why Beth seems to be in a daze the longer that she stays at the resort. Dr. Bonomo (Proschat Madani) is drugging her. The plot is to activate Alma, render Beth helpless and keep Gretchen clueless, but once she knows too much, Koenig stops trying to protect her and decides to use her in the experiment.
Obviously this whole scenario is rape, but females, the human medical team and the Hooded Woman, play an important role in this violation. Gretchen is queer, presumably a lesbian if she identifies as female—Schafer is trans and/or nonbinary. Unlike others who visit the resort, if Gretchen winds up pregnant, she will not think that it is an accidental pregnancy. She starts a consensual tryst with Ed (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), a French woman who also notices that the resort is strange and hightails it out of there. Gretchen’s first kiss with Ed is reprised with her horrifying encounter with the Teenage Girl, who is likely experiencing her first mating ritual, which Koenig has made inseparable from violence, lack of consent and connection.
“Cuckoo” is such a great movie because the end challenges Koenig’s God complex that a species could not survive without him, and he has the authority over how an entire species should live by forcing them to disguise their features and making them monsters to those they assault. We have no idea how the Homo Cucildae naturally behaves without human interference, i.e. they may not be inherently violent. Koenig is a mad scientist who colonizes bodies. He is part of a continuum of problematic conservationist that uses human standards to judge a species and forces them to adhere to a white supremacist, gender normative, eugenics standard with blonde wigs, makeup , sensible clothes and heels.
If all art explores, pre-fall, post fall, heaven and hell, then “Cuckoo” is the unusual horror film that bends towards utopia post-fall. Gretchen goes on an emotional journey from correctly discerning that her sister is not a human being, but instead of adhering to her father and Koenig’s values, her rearing, that species must fight for resources and play a zero-sum game, she challenges them and starts by interrogating and ultimately rejecting Henry’s protection. Koenig treats human life as if it is disposable, and Henry wants to commit genocide against all the Homo Cucildae, which would include Alma.
Gretchen finds a third way by rejecting earlier generations disastrous ideas imposed upon nature in a speciesist attempt of supremacy and decides to save her sister. It is very satisfying that Gretchen, not Henry, kills the Hooded Woman because Gretchen then Alma rejects the generational toxic cycle and work together to save each other. While there is no way to unscramble the egg, Gretchen and Alma recognizing that they are sisters despite their differences and physical assaults (Alma scratches Gretchen’s face when she initially gets activated and sees Gretchen holding a knife over her to keep the Hooded Woman at bay) is a good start. In a day and age where consensual reproduction does not require a traditional heterosexual relationship (shout out to “The Mattachine Family”), Alma could have a full life without turning her sister into an enemy or a victim of sexual violence and reproductive coercion.
