There’s nothing more disappointing than watching a movie unfold only to run away with the ending, or even worse, watching a filmmaker build atmosphere and tension and then end it with a shootout, but if the movie is good enough, it won’t be a complete waste of your time.
Tillman Singer CuckooSinger wrote and directed the film. Cuckooa folk horror film that works best when you don’t know what’s going on. It’s fair to say that Singer is a better director than he is a better writer.
Director Singer said Hunter Schafer’s character, Gretchen, Cuckoo Gretchen lies on her back with ease. The role suggests a burgeoning movie-star career for Schafer, if Hollywood has the mettle. It helps that one of her co-stars is the always-great Dan Stevens, playing the slyly handsome Mr. Koenig. But it’s Schafer who carries the film to its end, as Gretchen finds within herself a strength and love she’s never known before.
Set in the Bavarian Alps, Singer’s script methodically begins laying the groundwork for an uneasy silence: Gretchen’s stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick) and father Louis (Marton Csokas) have been hired to build a new hotel in König, and Gretchen is grieving the death of her biological mother and struggling to fit in with her new stepfamily, which includes her quiet half-sister Alma (Mila Liu).
But the script was almost a flop. CuckooSinger can’t let the mysterious happenings in the resort town go unresolved. Towards the end of the film, Stevens is given the unenviable task of explaining the strange events and brutal murders. But the screenplay doesn’t know how much is too much, and how much is too little. In its attempt to explain everything, Cuckoo We are in very real danger of being shut down.
At least, that would have been the case if it hadn’t been for Schaefer’s dark and evocative emotional journey. perfection It’s a must-see. Schaefer is no exception. CuckooLike an unquenchable flame, she continues to burn every moment. CuckooSometimes it feels like it will disappear in an instant, and other times it feels like it will burn everything up.
The scenes between Schafer and Stevens are great, with Stevens playing his trademark passive-aggressive bad guy to some riveting, writhing moments, and the way he purposefully mispronounces Gretchen’s name might hint at what Singer is trying to say about identity.
The core of this is Cuckoo The film seems to be trying to explore something about the roles we play in both our biological and theatrical families. Csokas’s Lewis is Gretchen’s father, but he feels cold and distant. Or Henwick’s Beth, who doesn’t seem to care much for Gretchen but dotes on Alma. Gretchen struggles to become part of the new family while also feeling like an outsider herself, more like a burden than a daughter.
Singer’s script has all the pieces laid out on the board, but when he starts to explain the logic behind it all, it starts to fall flat. These thematic notions of identity and the roles people place on themselves are very much there, but in trying to make sense, Singer undermines it all, despite his visual flair in using nature and the resort’s brutalist architecture to create an inherent clash of styles and sensibilities.
Humor is supposed to act as a sort of saving valve for a film like this. Cuckoo It feels forced. There’s a scene where Schaefer’s Gretchen interrogates Steven’s Koenig in front of his family, all while Simon Waskow’s eerie music threatens to overpower the moment. Steven’s answer is flippant but oddly poetic, and Gretchen exclaims, “That’s a weird way to put it!” But the bit of meta-commentary felt out of place and pulled me out of the film. Singer’s script doesn’t feel like it’s trying to create a Lynchian atmosphere, instead taking chances and over-explaining events that no one wanted explained.
Paul Falz’s lensing combines the majestic beauty of the remote mountain forests, landscapes that tickle the subconscious and trick the mind into cheating. Like a Rorschach test, the dense forests evoke a sense of mystery and the eerie.
One of the things I liked about it was Cuckoo There’s a subtle flourish here, an innate understanding of what it’s like to feel alone in the dark. Faltz and Singer depict an early scene in which the characters notice their shadows moving oddly, or maybe it’s just a trick of the light. In one scene, Schafer’s Gretchen is riding her bike down a country road at night, the light from a street lamp casting strange, almost hypnotic shadows on the sidewalk.
When I lived in Missouri, I would drive home at night on the old back roads, headlights reflecting off the darkness. A couple of times I would come across a cow in the middle of the road, and the cow’s eyes would glow red in the headlights long before the light came on. I say this because Cuckoo It seems to aim to capture these moments, not play them off as cheesy comp scares, but rather than acknowledging these little moments that we’ve all felt in some way, but that rarely feel like anymore because they have nothing to do with fanservice.
but Cuckoo All this goodwill is lost when we try to make sense of things. If Singer had left us alone with nothing to do, we could have sat down and discussed. Cuckoo I actually wanted to go home, Cuckoo We need to be careful not to confuse ourselves and completely embarrass us in the process.
It doesn’t help that the monster in “Cuckoo” is most effective when we only catch a glimpse of it: while shrouded in the darkness of night, it evokes a sense of otherworldly terror, but once you bring it out into the light and we can see it clearly, it ceases to be the stuff of nightmares and becomes a woman in a wig with weird glasses.
Cuckoo It starts slowly but picks up speed. We are introduced to a detective named Henry (Jan Bluthart) who doesn’t seem to be entirely honest. It’s as if he knows more than he’s letting on. But the most fascinating character is the cool and beautiful Ed (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey). Gretchen and Ed quickly connect with each other and are attracted to each other. I would have preferred more scenes of Gretchen and Ed gazing at each other with burning longing, rather than pointless exposition.
It’s a shame Singer gives it so little play: Ed and Gretchen’s relationship could have boldly expressed the themes of identity and otherness that are implicit in the story’s framework. CuckooBut this isn’t a story-driven horror movie, and the film nearly goes off the rails in its attempt to establish a plot by the final scene — or it might have been, if not for Schafer’s dynamic, riveting performance.
Image courtesy of Neon
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