It’s going to be hard to write about this one. I am not sure I fully understand what actually happens in Tilman Singer’s new film Cuckoo, and I’m not sure if I fully get what it all meant and what happened in the reality of the story and what was imaginary. And I’m not sure if any of it really matters because the impression I left this film with is it’s weird just for the sake of shock value and well, being weird. There are a couple of good performances and a few well executed moments of tension that come close to saving the day here, but we never quite get there.

17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is reeling from the death of her mother and has gone to live with her father (Jan Bluthardt) and his new wife, and their daughter, in the German Alps. Her father is working with Herr König (Dan Stevens), a mysterious figure who owns a rundown motel. Soon after, strange things start happening, leading Gretchen and her family with whom she is spending time with reluctantly, down a horrific and inexplicable rabbit hole of terror.

First I would like to say Hunter Schafer is a star, full stop. She serves as the audience conduit into this weird and off-putting world where nothing is quite making sense and we’re questioning everything. The point of her character is to look bewildered and horrified all the time and nothing else, but Schafer is always giving more, and if she continues to pick roles like this over easier choices, her career will be an interesting one to watch. And Dan Stevens is more and more finding his place in Hollywood. He’s been having some fun in villain roles lately, and he uses his classic good looks as a foil for menace in a way that’s particularly effective. He’s going for a broad, over-the-top kind of villain here and it works quite well.

And the movie doesn’t really work if not for Schafer and Stevens, because they’re called upon to do some rather wacky stuff, and so little of it is even trying to make sense. This is German filmmaker Tilman Singer’s sophomore feature film, after 2018’s Luz, a film I admittedly have not seen. There is a lot of genuine artistry to the craft here, and the film looks great, shot by Paul Faltz and has fun with sound design (a recurring noise we hear throughout got annoying after awhile but I can appreciate where they were going with this), and Simon Waskow’s score is effective. But the script keeps writing itself into holes it never quite emerges on the other side of.

Tilman Singer’s script begins to explain what’s going on to the viewer, but is never explaining enough, and it should either explain more or less, because as the finished product stands, this is quite the bewildering experience. There was a certain point in this movie where it fully lost me, and I kept sitting there, hoping things would turn around and this would all start to make sense, but it never did for me. When you leave a movie and immediately want to look for one of those “ending explained” YouTube videos, the filmmaker has not done their job properly. And if you’ve read my reviews before, you know I love wacky, I love batshit, especially when it comes to the horror genre. But there is a fine line these films have to tread between organized chaos and complete incoherence, and Cuckoo earns its title, for sure, but it also has no idea where that line is.

I admire the ambition of Cuckoo, but I am also at this point a few days removed from seeing it, and I still haven’t quite figured out what its whole deal is. If there are deeper meanings to everything going on, beyond the very surface level themes that would be clear to any viewer, they were lost on me and I did not care enough to investigate them further. I love a put-the-puzzle-pieces together type of narrative, but you have to give me a reason to become invested in the outcome of the puzzle. And aside from two very good performances from Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, Cuckoo doesn’t give this viewer what it needs to.