After a breakout role as Jules Vaughn in HBO’s “Euphoria,” Hunter Schafer has quickly gained a lot of popularity and love. With her rapidly growing stardom, Schafer has appeared in a handful of recent films such as “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” (2023) and “Kinds of Kindness” (2024). Her latest feature is Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” (2024), which is as wacky as its title suggests.
“Cuckoo” stars Schafer in the lead role with supporting performances from Jan Bluthardt, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick, Dan Stevens and Mila Lieu. The film is about a family moving to a resort in the Bavarian Alps to help build a new hotel, overseen by a suspicious man named Herr König (Stevens). Grieving from the death of her mother, Gretchen (Schafer) has little personal connection to her stepmother Beth (Henwick) and her mute half-sister Alma (Lieu).
After Gretchen is given a job at the resort, she begins to notice strange occurrences throughout the hotel. With the help of a private detective named Henry (Bluthardt), Gretchen is determined to find out what is going on.
Like its distant cousin A24, the film’s production company Neon was once small. However, it is now a supporting force for marketing and distributing independent cinema, with films like “Longlegs” (2024) having some of the best marketing in a long time. Now, audiences get to witness what Neon’s latest feature, “Cuckoo,” offers to the table.
The movie features a stellar lead performance by Schafer. Although Schafer is 25 years old, her acting is good enough to convince anybody she is a teenager. Viewers get to see her struggle to cope with the death of her mother, and Schafer’s performance matches how a teenager would react to such an awful situation.
Gretchen is in an unfamiliar place with people who are strangers to her, and her family’s denial of her claims does not help. Gretchen’s harrowing situation is a textbook way of setting up a horror film. When the final act of the film arrives, however, the film does not necessarily fail to have the setups pay off but feels lackluster.
There are plenty of creepy things happening in the film, but there could have been more time devoted to showing horror aspects. Also, the supporting characters are shallow and have no real depth to them. The only interesting characters in the whole film are Gretchen and Herr König, with the latter having a good performance by Stevens.
For most of his career, Stevens has been a simple character actor with appearances in films such as “The Guest” (2014), “Colossal” (2016) and the box-office hit “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” (2024). Stevens is given the chance to over exaggerate in “Cuckoo,” and he takes full advantage of it.
He and Schafer carry the film on their backs. It is a shame none of the other actors had enough time to be fully fleshed out. A character like Henry could have been a real highlight, but he is thrown to the wayside.
“Cuckoo” has a bizarre concept, but the idea is not fully developed. A film that is not afraid to dip its feet into strange territory usually goes all the way with its ideas. Unfortunately, “Cuckoo” feels like it could have gone a bit farther — despite its odd nature.
If more time was spent going into detail in the script, the film could vastly improve. But, if “Cuckoo” sounds like a film you would like to watch, then be prepared for a film unlike anything else you will see this year.
Rating: 2.5/5
