Cuckoo

I spend all year saving my reviews of WLW horror movies so I can publish them in October. I considered disregarding this rule for Cuckoo because it actually came to a movie theatre in August and is therefore, maybe a movie that people actually care to read timely reviews about. But ultimately, I decided to hold off and publish this review in October. Why? Because Cuckoo is a good, sapphic horror movie. And I figured if I didn’t save this review for October publication, the entire month of horror movie reviews could be without a single positive review. Well, it turns out, I found one other good sapphic horror movie for October. I just had to go pretty obscure with it. As far as good sapphic movies people have actually seen? Cuckoo is still flying that flag alone for the year.

17 year-old Gretchen moves to Bavaria with her father Luis, stepmother, Beth and their daughter, Alma. Luis and Beth have plans to develop a new section of resort attached to a pre-existing resort town run by Herr König. König’s got some weird vibes. He offers Gretchen an easy job working the front desk, but constantly asserts how dangerous to go out or even have lights on after dark. And clearly, König’s not just making things up. First off, there’s a strange pattern of female guests at the hotel vomiting before either dying or not being seen again. Secondly, Gretchen has multiple run-ins with a mysterious and clearly dangerous hooded woman. While Gretchen seeks to uncover what exactly is going on in this resort town, she becomes progressively more injured, making her increasingly vulnerable to the unusual danger this resort town is home to.

Let’s get the queer stuff out of the way. It’s pretty unimportant. Gretchen checks in a French woman named Ed. Ed flirts with Gretchen and suggests she come to Paris with her. On their second meeting, they share a cigarette, make out and Gretchen takes Ed up on her offer of Paris. Of course, they don’t make it. Ed appears at the end, suggesting maybe this relationship will continue. In a lot of movies, an adult woman who flirts with a 17 year-old, asks her to leave the country and smokes pot while driving would be a red flag. But because this is a horror movie, Ed is probably the character who harms Gretchen (physically, emotionally etc) the least. Mostly, Ed is here just to show that Gretchen simply leaving the area isn’t a possibility. But hey, they made out at one point too so, welcome to WLWfilmreviews, Cuckoo!

I admire Cuckoo for its fairly unique premise and ideas. If anything, there might be too many ideas. Not all of them are good and some of which aren’t fleshed out as fully as I liked. This sort of biology, sci-fi horror is a lot rarer of a film than say, a slasher or ghost story. And the film did intrigue me. The information given about the horror threat is interesting, if occasionally incomplete. I have a lot of lingering questions into the “how” of the biological threat. That being said, I also have faith that if I asked director Tilman Singer directly, they would have answers for my questions. Those answers just didn’t make it into the movie. Because if I had my way, there’d probably have to be multi-minute exposition dumps about fake horror biology which would surely impact the pacing of this horror film.

While Cuckoo has a creative premise, it’s not always used to create the most effective scares. There’s an element of disoriented repetition of events that occurs several times in the movie. While stylistically interesting, these moments aren’t exactly scary. And like many horror stories, Cuckoo becomes less scary the more that’s revealed. The hooded woman who follows Gretchen is at her scariest when she’s the most unknown and almost unseen. As the plot develops and we learn the specifics of her existence and see more visual reveals of how she looks, she becomes less scary. This is far from a unique problem Cuckoo faces. Humans fear the unknown. There’s a lot of fear in a mystery. But stories usually hinge on revealing the unknown or solving the mystery. Almost always, this ultimately removes a level of fear from the proceedings.

While Cuckoo is an imperfect movie, I respect it for taking risks, having original ideas and getting a few good, scary moments. It’s also a great showcase for Hunter Schafer as an actress. Grading on the curve of WLW horror movies, it’s pretty up there. But even grading on the curve of general horror movies, Cuckoo is still pretty good because it stands out from the crowd. 2024 has been a pretty great year for horror both in terms of quantity and quality. Cuckoo isn’t the best horror movie I’ve seen this year. But it’s easily the best WLW horror film released in 2024.

Overall rating: 7/10

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