Cuckoo: Hunter Schafer gives a game performance in this unapologetically berserk horror

The word ‘cuckoo’ has multiple associations, all of which will be played out over the course of writer/director Tilman Singer’s quirky horror. It can refer to a bird which sometimes engages in brood parasitism, depositing its eggs in the nests of other bird species – and here we find its human, or at least human-like, equivalent. Then there’s the cuckoo clock, whose distinct chimes at an unexpected moment elicit hysterical laughter from one character, as though he is attuned to the upfront absurdity of its inclusion in Singer’s film. It is also, of course, a slang term for ‘crazy’, and so perfectly characterises a film that is unapologetic about its unhinged nature.  

On the cusp of adulthood and still grieving her mother’s death, 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) has been forced to move from her home in America to Resort Alpschatten in Bavaria where her father Luis (Márton Csókás) and stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), both architects, are designing another resort for the owner Herr König (Dan Stevens). The resentful, rebellious Gretchen is quick to notice that there is something very peculiar going on in the resort, especially in its special cabin for couples, known as the Love Nest. Gretchen and others get caught in strange hypnotic loops that appear to be triggered by a squawking sound and she is relentlessly pursued by a hooded woman (Kalin Morrow) with eyes that glow red. She eventually joins forces with ex-cop Henry Landau (Jan Bluthardt) who is running a covert operation to expose and end the sinister conspiracy. 

Singer rolls with themes of mesmerism and untethered identity that were already essential to his feature debut Luz (2018) but substitutes a mad scientist and a very unusual creature for the earlier film’s demonic possession. Like the monster at its centre, alienated Gretchen struggles to find a proper place for herself, caught between love and hate for her younger, mute stepsister Alma (Mila Lieu), and plans to leave with her new lover Ed (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey), effectively a stranger, for a life outside the nest – but something keeps violently getting in the way of her attempted departures, leaving her ever more physically injured. Amid unsettling sound design and plotting that is in every sense loopy, questions are raised about nature and nurture, and about human bonds that go beyond the conventional norms of genetics and biology. The theme is amplified not only by Gretchen’s sexuality, but (more obliquely) by the casting of trans actress Schafer, in a film that ultimately offers a (screeching) plea for acknowledging and embracing sisterhood in any form.

 ► Cuckoo is in UK cinemas now.