Review: CUCKOO

 by Rob DiCristino

Like the bird. You know, in the clock.

“A work of art does not answer questions,” said Leonard Bernstein, at least according to the Maestro tote bag that Netflix sent me. “It provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.” It’s a cogent, powerful theory — certainly more cogent and powerful than Bradley Cooper’s film — and one that writer/director Tilman Singer must have had in mind when putting together his sophomore effort, Cuckoo. Does a great film, even a horror/mystery such as this one, need to answer the questions it poses in order to be considered a success? As much as we might enjoy piecing together puzzles and having our Endings Explained, do we really want art expressed in terms of logic and reason? Isn’t filmmaking an exercise in empathy, as Roger Ebert said (possibly on a tote bag)? Feelings don’t adhere to reason, do they? Don’t they tend to provoke the very tension and contradiction to which the bag so elegantly alluded? Isn’t it that ambiguity that makes art so priceless? Maybe, but can someone explain to me what the fuck is going on in Cuckoo?

Still reeling from the untimely death of her mother, an American teenager (Euphoria star Hunter Schafer as Gretchen) is forced to move to the German Alps with her estranged father (Marton Csokas as Louis), ice queen stepmother (Jessica Henwick as Beth), and younger half-sister (Mila Lieu as Alma), whose mutism and predisposition toward seizures demand the lion’s share of her parents’ attention. Why the German Alps? Well, Louis and Beth are apparently the lead designers of an alpine resort funded by Herr Kӧnig (Dan Stevens), whose aggressive accent and vestiary eccentricity might have you wondering if Bond villains suffer from an excess in restraint. Konig is also funding a nondescript medical institute — run by Dr. Bonomo (Proschat Madani) — and offers only cryptic hints as to its mission. Soon after joining Trixie (Greta Fernández) for shifts behind the hotel desk, Gretchen begins to notice some odd behavior from Kӧnig’s guests: Their tendency to vomit uncontrollably, for example, and that one trenchcoated woman (Kalin Morrow) who seems to be stalking her for no discernible reason.

So far, so simple. Any genre fan worth their salt can predict what comes next, and Cuckoo is happy to oblige. Gretchen’s suspicions about Kӧnig’s work are quickly confirmed by a former police detective (Jan Bluthardt) whose wife once fell victim to the institute’s sinister experimentation, and Konig drops the veneer of innocence and proceeds with the mustache-twirling mad-scientisting right on cue. Though largely indifferent to Alma for most of, well, their lives, apparently, Gretchen wastes no time leaping into big sister mode when Alma becomes the next target of Kӧnig’s machinations around the end of the second act. This is all Very Good and Makes Perfect Sense, especially when we throw in a brassy Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey as Gretchen’s makeout partner, a haunting leitmotif evolved from a diegetic bassline of Gretchen’s own composition, and idiosyncratic production design that ambiguates Cuckoo’s time period — characters use both smartphones and cassette tapes — and recalls the midcentury Giallo films from which Singer is almost certainly pulling inspiration.

But just when we expect Cuckoo to start revealing hidden truths and unmasking clandestine assassins, Singer grabs ahold of the film and drives it even further into a world of discordant weirdness, assaulting us with images, scenarios, and sounds — get ready for a deafening amount of bird-like screeching, even for a film called Cuckoo — that further complicate and rarely answer our questions about what exactly Kӧnig is doing and how exactly Gretchen’s family is involved. And while my tote bag assures me that narrative coherence is not a prerequisite for good art, we should at least enjoy what we’re watching, but Singer burns through any built-up goodwill with an exhausting finale that undercuts or flat-out ignores much of thematic foreshadowing he seemed to be doing early on. Gretchen’s grief and loneliness — beautifully illustrated by the despondent messages she leaves on her dead mother’s machine — are never given meaningful resolution, unless perhaps Singer has hidden them under the long treatises on avian mating rituals he crams into Kӧnig’s final scenes.

Maybe Bernstein is right, though; Maybe Cuckoo’s meaning can be found in its contradictions, the places where Singer chooses to befuddle us rather than hold our hands. It’s certainly not the first time an artist has left their work open to interpretation, and maybe multiple viewings will reveal a few new layers that will ultimately make the whole thing gel together. It’s far more likely, though, that there is no meaning. It’s far more likely that Tilman Singer is just a vibes guy, an artist who couldn’t be less interested in appeals to our intellect, an artist who would rather let his actors go as big and bold as they can — Schafer and Stevens make for absolutely terrific weirdos — than busy himself with some forced profundity that will ultimately ring hollow in a niche genre exercise like Cuckoo. And why not? There are positives here, of course, mostly in Paul Faltz’s claustrophobic cinematography and two or three laser-guided jokes so dry they’re liable to crumble into dust. Hell, if you’re anything like my Maestro tote bag, that’ll be more than enough for you.

Cuckoo hits U.S. theaters on Friday, August 9th.