GENRE | Nesting Horror – Hunter Schafer Goes 'Cuckoo' x Fantasia 2024

"I expect her to come for you again."

Fantasia International Film Festival

Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer storms German filmmaker Tilman Singer's stylish sophomore body horror thriller, Cuckoo. She stars as a knife-wielding teenage brat of a final girl, Gretchen, stranded somewhere in rural Germany. Its experimental nature at first toys with unknown supernatural killer tendencies before heading down a more conventional slasher genre path to its thrills.

Set in a remote Bavarian Alpine resort town in a time when answering machines were still commonplace, Singer takes his time by slow-burning the first half-hour to establish an eerie, creepy vibe for audiences. Co-starring Marton Csokas and Jessica Henwick as Gretchen's estranged father and stepmother, we are first innocently introduced to an awkward blended family dynamic before Schafer establishes her rebelliously sullen, queer character with a penchant for audio.

A superb Dan Stevens as a real Dr. Moreau type continues to choose interesting, offbeat roles that play against his natural British charisma and good looks as a creepy German scientist with clearly ulterior, menacing motives as he takes an unusual interest in Gretchen. His screeds about the preservation of species are truly unsettling. There's also a strong but incoherent conspiratorial tone to the animalistic tension where troubled but intelligent men have certain ideals about breeding and bearing children.

Neon / Elevation Pictures

Clearly inspired by The Shining and other remote cinematic fright fests, its isolation in the Alps only further commits to its delightful weirdness. Its idyllic setting of isolated beauty further contrasts the unsettling atmospheric tone. It's too bad the sometimes cartoonish goofiness of the scare tactics sidetracks any real hint of anything sinister. Still, Schafer does fantastic work to counteract the cinematic trippiness of her surroundings.

Singer is slow to reveal its actual sketchy premise for the better as it grounds the unclear reproductive experiment lurking in the background. Cuckoo proves its nightmarish genre chops for another strange but intriguing little midnight horror romp that foregrounds Schafer's magnetic talent for reactionary character performances.

Cuckoo screened at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.


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