‘Cuckoo’ Review: Chaos Reigns In Neon’s Cheerfully Yucky Popcorn Horror – Berlin Film Festival

Everyone knows that hotels — preferably isolated, ideally with very few guests — make the best settings for horror films. All that sad anonymity, all that provisional space ready to be filled with something really nasty. In Cuckoo, Alpenplatz, run by the excessively friendly Mr. Konig (Dan Stevens) totally fits the bill.

You never get a clear idea of its geography, apart from an enormous foyer fronted by a sort of supermarket where the odd, disoriented guest wanders in to vomit into the freezer unit. “Oh yes, that happens sometimes,” says the flirty receptionist Trixie (Greta Fernandez), who apparently has just stepped out of one of Brigitte Bardot’s lesser movies. There also are some bungalows — how close to the main building is not clear either — including one painted pink that Konig calls “the love nest.” In horror, that has to be a bad sign.

So a hotel is a good start. Throw in a sinister hospital up the road reminiscent of one of David Cronenberg’s mysterious “institutes,” where nasty experiments are inevitably taking place; add some more pick ’n’ mix genre elements, including a pair of jealous sisters, a policeman operating under some kind of remote brain control, a couple of jealous step-sisters and a woman in a blond wig who keeps emerging from the night to attack Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), the heroine and destined Final Girl. 

Where are Gretchen’s parents when it matters? Once again, director-writer Tilman Singer has chosen from a reliably dog-eared horror-movie menu. Gretchen’s American mom has just died. Dad (Marton Csókás), long since remarried to a younger woman called Beth (Jessica Henwick). They have a peculiar little daughter, Alma (Mila Lieu), who, since they got to the forest hotel, is having increasingly vicious fits. Inevitably, they just don’t get what’s happening here.

But what is happening, exactly? Stevens’ Konig calls himself a preservationist. What he is preserving is never really specified, although we do know that — spoiler alert! — the nasty experiments center on producing a race of supra-humans born to unwitting surrogates among the hotel’s zombified guests – cuckoos in the love nests, in case you didn’t twig – whose weird children respond to bird calls, their throats vibrating in response to screeches so devastating they make other people’s ears hurt like hell. 

What’s in this breeding program for Konig and his slick chum at the hospital, Dr. Bonomo (Proschat Madani)? I guess mad scientists gonna do mad science: That’s reason enough. Why everyone keeps vomiting, what the protoplasmic stuff emitted by the bird-people is — these things are not explained. Perhaps they’re just there for their yuckiness. Are Gretchen’s father and stepmother in on the plot, whatever the plot is, or just Konig’s dumb dupes? Sorry, no idea.

Not that this really matters. There is a cheerfully willing audience for this kind of film, some of whom were at the Berlin Film Festival’s press screening, whooping and laughing as the crazy cuckoos squawked for their nestlings and the last few functioning humans ran around the hospital — which had even fewer guests than the hotel — shooting, stabbing and pulling bookshelves down on each other. The choreography here is such a mess that we still have no grasp of the dramatic space, usually vital in a fight scene, but it is still surprisingly entertaining. There is always a fresh lump of protoplasm or unexpected spurt of blood coming from somewhere.

As chief villain, Stevens has an appealingly quirky, ironic twist to his evil smile that encourages us to think this is all a bit of a lark, really. He finds a fine contrasting foil in Schafer, who plays her sulky teen-turned-avenging angel absolutely straight. It works because, however absurd her situation, we see from her face that it’s desperate. The legions of fans she amassed as a star of Euphoria will thrill to see her fighting off the crazy blond bird-lady, Konig and his henchmen — with a cast hobbling one hand and a flick-knife in the other, covered in minor wounds herself — as the body count rises.

None of this is quite coherent. It might just be nonsense. Well, it is. But it’s slated for release soon — this is by no means arthouse horror —– and will no doubt sell a lot of popcorn.

Title: Cuckoo
Festival: Berlin (Berlinale Special Gala)
Distributor: Neon
Director-screenwriter: Tilman Singer
Cast: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Marton Csókás, Mila Lieu, Proschat Madani
Running time: 1 hr 42 min