Cuckoo

Cuckoo | dir. Tilman Singer | 103 min

Cuckoo is the kind of bonkers bizarre-concept movie that could only have been willed into being in the world of low-budget films. The land of big budget blockbusters is a hostile environment for this particular breed, and it’s exactly the kind of movie that needs time to properly gestate and thrive in a more welcoming habitat. Perhaps the only well-known production company consistently birthing low-budget horror films these days is Blumhouse, but even their seeming embrace of low-budget blood and gore is built on a model of success by dominating the lottery; you put out enough movies, eventually at least a couple are going to find an audience. This is also known in circles as the Netflix Gambit, though as part of their official creed, they boil everything down to the lowest common denominator of content as opposed to art or storytelling.

And Cuckoo has a story to tell.

At its heart, Cuckoo is a story about family, and no matter how weird the reveals get–and they do get pretty weird–this core exploration of not just the “how’s” but the “why’s” of who we choose to be a part of lives is really what keep the whole affair from unmooring completely. Say what you will, but the simple themes like the importance of family are so powerful that they can transform a simple movie about a gang of adrenaline junkie street car racers into a multibillion-dollar franchise, a fact that Vin Diesel and his accountant are no doubt very, very thankful for.

Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is a 17-year-old girl reeling from the death of her biological mother while being transplanted from her home in the good old US of A to a picturesque setting in the Bavarian Alps. Almost immediately she’s established as feeling like a sort of fifth wheel (technically fourth wheel, but the saying really doesn’t make much sense that way) in her newly formed family unit alongside biological father Luis (Marton Csokas), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). From the very beginning of the movie, it’s clear that all is not well on the home front. Gretchen struggles simultaneously with the grief of losing a loved one, major sudden life changes, and feeling in turns as though she is imposing on her new family unit or being imposed upon by Alma, about a decade younger than herself.

There’s a clear sense that Gretchen resents Alma seemingly usurping her place as the object of affection from their shared father, only compounded by the obvious emotional distance between Gretchen and her adoptive matriarch, Beth. Not having been part of a blended family myself, I’m probably not in a position to comment intelligently on the nuances of the family dynamics in that particular situation. However, as an audience member, and as an older sibling myself, some feelings of resentment towards a younger, newer model doesn’t seem entirely out of the question, especially during those tumultuous teenage years, when a boiling stew of hormones tends to amplify emotions exponentially, and every minor crisis or even inconvenience feels like it could legitimately be The End of The World.

The irony, of course, is that Gretchen isn’t wrong; Alma is revealed to truly be an outsider, in a very real sense. As it turns out, she’s literally another species of humanoid. These cuckoo sapiens look nearly identical to their homo sapiens cousins, with some slight differences to their eyes seemingly developing later in life and they lack the power of speech (Alma is shown using a text-to-speech app to compensate for this linguistic shortcoming). They can, however, emit some kind of debilitating sonic phenomenon that incapacitate their prey, and they procreate through a process known as brood parasitism, whereby one species will fool parents from another species into raising their offspring for them, a strategy that’s the envy of deadbeat dads the world over. In this specific case, the cuckoo people literally impregnate their human hosts while unwittingly through the use of parasite-infested vomit that is force-fed to the victim.

This is a concept that I discovered only in watching this movie and researching in researching the details of the story further, and will promptly employ 20 oz of the nearest, hardest liquor I can find to make sure I forget about completely after writing this review.

This is all thanks to the help of Herr König (Dan Stevens), a self-appointed wildlife advocate who purposely enables the cuckoo people to impregnate their unwitting human hosts, as is the case with Beth resulting in the birth of Alma. This whole development could be interpreted as some kind of commentary on environmental activism, though what that commentary is, I really couldn’t say. Under normal circumstances, I would argue, as any reasonable person would, that it would ultimately be beneficial to maximize biological diversity on our planet. However, when that same biological diversity comes at the cost of violating the basic rights of sapient beings, it becomes harder to make that argument. I don’t know if writer-directer Tilman Singer was beaten up for his lunch money by a member of Greenpeace when he was in highschool, but the messaging in this particular instance seems convoluted. Thankfully, though, this is the only area where Cuckoo stumbles thematically.

In real life, the cuckoo doesn’t infect anybody (except with certain Australian songs that get stuck in your head for days on end at the mere mention of the name) but lays its eggs in the nest of another bird, essentially tricking that other bird family to raise its young. Depending on the perspective of the characters in the story, both Gretchen and Alma may be interpreted as being the subject of this metaphor. Gretchen clearly perceives Alma as not belonging to her family unit, expressly refusing to acknowledge her as her sister, half-sister, stepsister, or soul sister. From Gretchen’s point of view, her stepmother Beth could be interpreted as the invading species, surreptitiously implanting her young into the family unit of another species, in this case another family. From Beth’s perspective, Gretchen is the invading species, a daughter from her current husband’s previous marriage who is imposing–though unintentionally through circumstances beyond her control–on a clearly established family unit.

This differing of perspective, of course, invites audiences to question what it means to be a family, similar to a drunken Thanksgiving dinner. From a purely animalistic, biological perspective, family is usually defined by blood relation. There’s a certain kind of instinctive logic about this base definition, especially considering the survival of the species from an evolutionary level. But we are not purely biological beings. We are sentient, sapient beings, with a complex inner life full of thoughts, feelings, and an awareness of self. Like Shrek and his fellow ogres, humans may also be described as having layers: of a sense of self and an identity.

We are more than the sum total of our instincts and animal urges; we can choose.

For the first two thirds of Cuckoo, Gretchen chooses to deny Alma as familial in any way. She denies the family she’s found herself with. It’s only when Alma’s life is threatened by Henry (Jan Bluthardt), a seemingly well-intentioned detective investigating the death of his late wife, a victim of the cukoo people’s impregnation gone wrong. At first, Gretchen partners with him to further explore the strange goings on at a local hotel where she briefly took up employment before stealing all the money from the till to run away to Europe with a beautiful stranger. (We’ve all been there.) But when it becomes clear that Henry wishes to kill all of the cuckoo people, including young Alma who isn’t yet aware of her heritage or the danger she finds herself thrust into, Gretchen undertakes her very own gearing up montage to take matters into her own hands.

Despite whatever differences–perceived or otherwise–the stepsiblings may have had, Alma demonstrates empathy for Gretchen’s grief by calling Gretchen’s birth mother through the use of a text-to-speech app on her phone to tell how much it would mean for her to respond to all the messages Gretchen has been leaving, unaware that Gretchen had been speaking to an answering machine as part of a way to process (or perhaps avoid dealing with) her grief. This simple act of kindness and sympathy cements what Gretchen had already begun to feel; that there was a familial bond between them that transcended the need for blood relation. Each in her own way was willing to fight for the other, and all it took for them to realize they were family was being caught in the literal crossfire between a deranged German scientist running unethical experiments on human beings and a disgraced detective hellbent on vengeance for the death of a beloved family member. Truly, a tale as old as time.

Cuckoo is a wild ride for those willing to take it. Not only is it a fine entry into the horror genre, but it truly gives hope that despite the jaded feelings I’ve felt as an audience member at times that I’d seen everything filmmakers could throw our way, there are still novel stories waiting to be told. Cuckoo is a bold movie write from the get go, even going so far as to include the spoiler for its own big twist in the title, which may have been a dead giveaway for any professional ornithologists watching this movie. Also, considering today’s political climate, having transgender actress Hunter Schafer star in the lead role that is in no way focused on her being transgender I think sens a powerful message of inclusion and diversity at a time when we seem to need it most. After all, in the end Cuckoo is a movie about family and belonging and teaches us to walk softly and always carry a switchblade, a necessary philosophy whether for family gatherings or facing the vicissitudes of a chaotic and strange universe.

Rating: 3.5/5