Cuckoo
(2024)

CUCKOO 🦉

Euphoria star Hunter Schaefer has her first lead role in German director Tilman Singer’s new film CUCKOO, which had its Montreal premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Hunter plays a grieving American girl named Gretchen, who, after the loss of her mother, must now join her father and his “other” family as he builds a new hotel in the German Alps. Gretchen ends up taking her father’s friend up on an offer to work at the hotel, which ends up being a decision she will soon come to regret.

I’m not going to beat around the bush; I did NOT like this movie at all.

I think all the performances were perfectly fine for what the story was, which, in all honesty, might’ve played to heavily into the CUCKOO-ness of it all.

It reminded me a lot of Royal Hotel (2023), which had a similar premise of an American girl working in a very remote part of a foreign country where overly suspicious things begin to take place. That movie, to me, did it so much better, whereas this felt like Jeepers Creepers (2001) and not in a good way.

To no fault of their own, both Dan Stevens and Boyd Holbrook don’t really move the needle for me when it comes to playing lead characters in a film. I enjoy when they are ancillary to either the protagonist or antagonist, but for whatever reason, when they are a focal point of the story, I just have a hard time getting invested.

From the discussions I’ve had, I’m probably in the minority on this one. I try to enjoy every movie I watch in some way, shape, or form, but this had me feeling like I wasted an hour and forty-two minutes of my life.

CUCKOO is an oddball horror story that relies too heavily on anecdotal story points to deliver on an idea that feels half baked.

Enjoy!

3/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr42mins

Where: Fantasia International Film Festival

Cuckoo Review (2024) The Richmond Reviewer -  August 10th, 2024.