Cuckoo (2024)

Plot of Cuckoo: There is a resort in the Bavarian Alps run by Herr König to which a family arrive, the father to be employed designing and supervising the construction of a further resort. The family is father, mother, Alma a mute preteen, and Grechen a seventeen year old who has recently joined up, her mother, the father’s first wife has died.  Herr Konig gives Grechen a job in his reception with the main receptionist, Trixie. They exchange shifts, causing Herr Konig some grief. Grechen is chased by a hooded woman while cycling home and meets a detective who is investigating a historic murder at the resort, and Alma suffers seisures triggered by an odd shrieking. Grechen is unhappy, having lost her mother, but meets and starts a gay relationship with Ed. They intend to leave together but Ed crashes her car, leaving Grethen injured and herself hospitalised. Henry, the detective tells Grechen that the area serves as host to a semi-human subspecies, who use humans to raise their young and it seems that Alma may have been conceived at a previous visit by the family to the resort, and is one of these subspecies. The hooded woman is the mother.

Content: No sex or nudity, although Ed and Grechen snog a bit. Grechen does mot really get on with anyone, and is often calling her home answering machine to hear her mother’s voice. People are seen vomiting, as does Alma, who also has some sort of fit. There are shrieks which seem to stop time and make the whole environment vibrate. Herr König, is generally overbearing and demanding, and at one point seems to be imprisoning Grechen in a former swimming pool. The detective, who seems to have been sacked for investigating the old murder, is the source of information about the cuckoo people. The figure which we come to know as the cuckoo mother is hooded and wears dark glasses, even at night. When the cuckoo shrieks take place we see time sort of stop, and people’s actions repeat themselves as the scenes vibrate.

A View: I am full of admiration for people who are multilingual and are able to be creative in something other than their native tongue, and so it is with Tilman Singer who is a German writing in English. But in the end I don’t know whether Singer intended that this outing be quite so silly, but silly it is and despite efforts on the part of the cast who tried hard, it is more irritating than engaging. So definitely not a watch even for nothing. If you are scrolling through the available horror outings, choose almost anything else.

Fun Fact: The producers seem to be giving the audience some sort of a message by casting a transgender woman in the role of Grechen, who is meant to be a lesbian. But for the life of me I don’t know what the message is.