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‘Cuckoo’ Review: A Superb Hunter Schafer is Menaced by a Loopy Dan Stevens in a Stylish, Enjoyably Incoherent Horror Romp
Dan Stevens menaces Hunter Schafer in German director Tilman Singer's deliriously entertaining, very bonkers second feature."Cuckoo"
Expanding on the scope of his impressive but constrained 2018 debut (the demonic-possession-meets-therapeutic-improv-exercise “Luz”) while retaining that film’s bird-flipping attitude toward unnecessary niceties like coherent plotting or narrative logic, German director Tilman Singer makes what ought to be his breakthrough with “ Cuckoo ” an energetically outlandish fusion of stylish atmospherics, old-school reproductive horror and pro-flickknife advertorial. Perverse Dr Moreau-style genetic experimentation, copious vomiting, the spewing of some sort of pregnancy-inducing ectoplasmic goop, not to mention ears that waggle uncannily, straggle-haired pheremonal teenagers, and a locale that is essentially a double whammy in incorporating both the classic Overlook-style remote mountain hotel and more than one nefarious-looking cabin-in-the-woods, “Cuckoo” has all of it, explains none of it and still somehow gets its has time to spend with König as he produces a little flute from his pocket and starts playing it like a latter-day Pied Piper. Part of the massive entertainment value of his wild and unwieldy second feature is that it is refreshingly free of any kind of manifesto, except perhaps in the vaguely anti-bioessentialist sense that when it comes to surviving a barrage of expertly retooled horror tropes, Dads are useless and Moms are unreliable, and the only things you can trust are little sisters, sexy lesbian strangers and your facility with a concealed blade.
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