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Set in a corner of the German Alps where few foreigners tend to wander, Cuckoo<\/em> follows as sullen, American teenager Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move in with her estranged father, Luis (Marton Csokas), and his new family. With all of Gretchen\u2019s beloved bandmates and treasured possessions back in the States, she can\u2019t help but feel alone living with her stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick) and mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). And while Gretchen doesn\u2019t try to hide her distaste at being uprooted for Luis\u2019 job expanding a secluded resort owned by Herr K\u00f6nig (Dan Stevens), she only feels comfortable expressing the depths of her sadness in voicemails to her unseen mother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
As Cuckoo <\/em>first opens, Gretchen\u2019s already dead set on fleeing from her new home where everyone seems a bit off \u2014 especially Stevens\u2019 hammy K\u00f6nig, who insists on the moody teen working as his receptionist. The way the resort\u2019s handful of guests sometimes wander around in stupors before becoming violently ill is enough to make Gretchen suspect something is amiss. But it isn\u2019t until she has a strange run-in with a shrieking woman (Kalin Morrow) that Gretchen realizes leaving her family behind might be a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Singer and cinematographer Paul Faltz take their time infusing Cuckoo <\/em>with a hazy sense of dread reminiscent of Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em> and Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala\u2019s Goodnight Mommy<\/em>, another film about children distrustful of their parents\u2019 bizarre behavior. Gretchen\u2019s the only person who can see past the resort\u2019s picturesque environment to appreciate how weird everything about the sterile, largely empty place is. And after her encounter with the screaming woman, Gretchen\u2019s sense of alienation from her family only intensifies because of how difficult it is for them to understand (or believe) her confusing account of what happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Cuckoo <\/em>uses time loops to leave Gretchen (and viewers) disoriented \u2014 one of the film\u2019s more novel tricks and one that becomes increasingly effective because of how cool those sequences look. Just as moments of panic sweat-drenched action seem to be winding down, reality begins to pulsate, and Cuckoo <\/em>flings you back right into the thick of Gretchen being chased by \u2026something. <\/em>But as that something gets closer and closer to finally getting its hands on Gretchen, Cuckoo <\/em>starts to overexplain itself in a way that makes the film feel uncertain of how to reveal its muddled central mystery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
As a series of alarming chases through the woods, Cuckoo<\/em> is a fantastic showcase of Singer\u2019s ability to conjure atmospheric unease and Schafer\u2019s chops as a rough-and-tumble final girl armed with a switchblade. But as a story \u2014 one that gestures toward ideas about reproductive horror, paternalism, and returning to nature \u2014 Cuckoo <\/em>doesn\u2019t exactly hang together the way it could if Singer focused more on narrative cohesion than disturbing lore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
In its final act, as it pulls out all the stops to make Gretchen\u2019s fight for her life feel perilous, Cuckoo <\/em>tries to weave all of its themes together by spelling them out. This makes the film feel excessively complicated, convoluted by half-baked details that would have been better shown rather than explicated,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
In Neon\u2019s growing canon of arthouse thrillers, Cuckoo <\/em>stands out as one of the studio\u2019s more original features, and the movie\u2019s visual artistry might be enough to convince some horror lovers that its last-minute expositional denseness is actually a sign of brilliance. But in its dizzied rush to tell you everything that\u2019s on its mind, Cuckoo <\/em>ends up revealing itself to be a shining example of how, sometimes, movies like this are served better by doing a little less.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Cuckoo <\/em>also stars Jan Bluthardt, Greta Fern\u00e1ndez, \u00c0strid Berg\u00e8s-Frisbey, Konrad Singer, and Proschat Madani. The film is in theaters now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coming on the heels of Longlegs and Immaculate, director Tilman Singer\u2019s Cuckoo feels like the next phase of Neon\u2019s plan to dominate this summer of horror. The movie\u2019s haunting atmosphere and gorgeous cinematography make it seem primed to tap into Hollywood\u2019s current obsession with unsettling features running on spooky vibes alone. But for all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-117375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}