Movie review: ‘Cuckoo’ is a horror hybrid that leaves a mark

Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” is a horror film that is unlike anything you’ve seen, even though it pays overt homage to its predecessors in the genre. The German writer/director gleefully combines tones, performance styles, mythology, music, references, a reverence for the natural world and contemporary allegory into an unpredictable chaos, out of which emerges the most fantastically effective creeping dread. One may not entirely understand exactly what is going on in “Cuckoo,” but there’s no denying how it makes you feel: rattled, unsettled, psychically imprinted with unforgettable images and sensations, which is how every good piece of genre cinema should leave its audience.

Singer makes the audience an active, even guilty participant in “Cuckoo,” a nod to another avian-themed horror film, by Alfred Hitchcock. At one point, co-star Dan Stevens breaks the fourth wall, looking directly into the lens, talking to a character on the other side of a surveillance camera, but speaking to us, the audience, reminding us how wonderful it is that we’ve been able to witness the unknowably terrifying events that have unfolded during the film. It’s akin to a moment in “The Birds” when a character looks into the camera and declares, “I think you’re the cause of all this.”

That participatory knowingness is imbued into the cinematography, shot by Paul Faltz on 35mm with a look that alternates between shadowy fear and gauzy fantasy. The camera moves of its own accord, making connections, showing us where to look, sneaking up on our heroine, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) when she least expects it. Gretchen is a surly American teenager who has been dragged to the Bavarian Alps with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick) and young half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) in the wake of her mother’s death. Her parents are there to plan a new resort for a Herr König (Stevens) and Gretchen gets a job at his current place, a rundown and retro mountain hotel where bizarre things happen to young women with a disturbing frequency.

Gretchen is a refreshing kind of final girl: she instantly becomes suspicious of the happenings going on around her, and tries to get out of there as soon as possible. She’s pursued by a screeching woman on her bike at night, and when her fears are dismissed, she tries to hitch a ride to Paris with comely hotel guest, Ed (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey). But Gretchen is stuck in a strange loop, unable to escape this place, and becoming increasingly battered in the process. She escapes a car wreck and spends the rest of the film bandaged, bruised and broken, ultimately submitting to the fact that she will have to learn what’s happening here in order to liberate herself from it.

With the prevalence of puking young woman, feminine figures darting through the woods and Herr König’s suave lecherousness, it all becomes clear that the nefarious goings-on in this town have to do with the control of women’s bodies, even if the true nature of these circumstances remains somewhat mysterious after all is said and done (Singer never quite explains it all in “Cuckoo,” which is a good thing). But the contemporary allegory of patriarchal control over reproduction pulsates throughout the film, though it remains open enough to inspire multiple readings.

That social relevance keeps us somewhat tethered to reality, as do its classical film influences, from Westerns to “Psycho,” which allows “Cuckoo” to spin out in all of its European art-house horror fairy-tale weirdness. Schaefer delivers her best performance, and the cast surrounding her are all distinct and distinctly odd in their own ways.

At times, it feels like every actor is in a different movie, though the variegated tones all come together with the bone-rattling sound design and textured cinematography to create an incredibly arresting cinematic experience. Singer demonstrates himself to be a mad scientist of celluloid sensation, creating a hybridized monster of influences, image, sound and emotion that one won’t soon forget.