In a very short time and with only a handful of projects, Hunter Schafer has carved out a career full of some very good performances. Tilman Singer’s new horror-thriller, Cuckoo, finds the actress doing her best work to date, going all in as a battered and bloodied representation of emotional pain in a film that takes her character through a twisted mystery of terror.

Schafer is Gretchen, a 17 year old aspiring musician with an attitude. Her father (Marton Csokas) and stepmother (Jessica Henwick) are moving the family to a remote area of Bavaria to design a resort for the strange Mr. König (Dan Stevens, becoming a genre film mainstay). Gretchen is still mourning the death of her mother and is in a state of constant anger that she must move so far away from her life in California to spend a year with her dad’s “other” family. Her younger, seemingly mute, stepsister, Alma (Mila Lieu), gets the brunt of Gretchen’s resentment.

Upon arrival, nothing seems right and, in fact, there is something quite sinister about Mr. König and the hotel he runs. As Gretchen goes to work at the front desk, she meets the hotel’s inhabitants. There is a lone French woman to whom Gretchen becomes attracted (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), a weird policeman who wants to speak privately with Gretchen, and any woman staying in the strangely pink (and somewhat Lynchian) bridal cabin becomes disoriented and vomits uncontrollably.

Herr König warns Gretchen to always be done working before nightfall (as she rides her bike home). Although he never tells her why, the film slowly reveals that there is something lurking in the woods that surround them. Of course, Gretchen ignores him (as she does not trust König) and rides her bike home alone. It is on the quiet night-covered country road where the film’s creepiest moment occurs. The filmmaker begins to play with the audience as Gretchen rides with her headphones on in the quiet night. At the edge of the frame, something catches our eye. Did we see something? There it is again! Once the streetlights enhance the shadows of danger onto the screen, the moment becomes playfully chilling. Director Singer is having a Hitchcockian blast.

At its core, Cuckoo is a savvy homage to the “mad doctor” genre of horror and is at its best when putting the audience inside the main character’s head; letting us participate in her mental unraveling. Gretchen begins having bizarre “episodes” where she gets caught in the same moment over and over again while viewers witness the disorienting imagery of her experience through director Singer’s manipulative jump cuts. 

Singer works well with cinematographer Paul Faltz to create a waking nightmare. Shooting on 35mm, the visual and aural tones are disturbing while Simon Waskow’s sinister score completes the package. 

The screenplay has some intriguing ideas and gets a good jab at men who seek to rule over a woman’s reproductive rights, but it isn’t perfect. The picture cannot fully balance the bizarre with the realism. For a film such as this, the director needs to either be methodical in their direction or go all-in with an absurd abandon. As things unravel (for Gretchen and the audience), the picture walks the line of spinning out of control, even if it seems appropriate for the director to go wild. Though Singer keeps things pretty much reigned in, the final act doesn’t quite know when to quit and goes on longer than it should.

Another flaw is found in Gretchen’s dad and stepmother. They aren’t well developed and are basically used as symbols rather than actual characters. At one point, it seems as if the film doesn’t know what to do with them, so they are abruptly discarded. They exit a scene towards the final act and that is it from these two rather important characters.

These issues are not small, but they don’t hurt the film’s overall success. This is an effective slice of perverted science horror that is full of palpable tension and paranoia. There isn’t a moment where the audience won’t feel the pull of this engrossing mystery, nor will they be able to resist the thrills and chills that come when Gretchen is confronted with the realities of her situation.

Tilman Singer became a festival circuit darling in 2019 due to his artful demonic-horror film, Luz. Certainly a good film, it became a work where style ruled over substance. With Cuckoo, Singer has crafted a film brimming with cinematic “meat”. This one is consistently interesting, with a large part of it becoming unrelentingly gripping. 

Anchored by a fantastic performance from Hunter Shafer, this is a wild and bloody ride of pure horror. 

Cuckoo

Written & Directed by Tilman Singer

Starring Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Martn Csokas, Mila Lieu, Jessica Henwick, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey

R, 102 Minutes, Neon, Fiction Park, Waypoint Entertainment