What’s so cuckoo about “Cuckoo”?

What would happen if you combined Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and threw in a little bit of modern Blumhouse schlock and a shocking realization that you’ve typed the letters ‘ck’ over and over in this sentence? You’d get Cuckoo. How was it? Is it worth a watch? Is it good? I’ll try to answer all of these questions without making a flock of bird puns.

In a nutshell, it was ok, yes, kinda. 

Lesbian Birds and

The film Cuckoo follows 17 year old Hunter Schaffer as she’s introduced to a resort town in Germany after being forced to tag along with her father’s new family following her mother’s passing. The town is run by a rich, very creepy man who you hoped would be a red herring. The parents hover over Schaffer’s step sister, who seems to get preferential treatment. Schaffer stretches her rebellious teenager wings by stealing from the rich creepy guy and running off with a French lesbian lady who Schaffer had only known for all of 30 minutes.

All the while, one of the resort’s cabins seems to be the epicenter of a scary trenchcoat lady with red eyes who repeatedly attacks Schaffer. Schaffer is no eagle-eyed detective, and decides to pair up with a sweaty cop who’s investigating the trenchcoat lady. Schaffer and the cop peck away at the mystery, which takes flight absolutely immediately.

Like. Immediately. The rich creepy resort owner literally looks into the camera and explains the entire plot. After that, we get a bit of screaming, screeching, gunfighting, and an unearned reconciliation between the sisters. The ‘scary’ trenchcoat lady, when revealed, turns out not to be all that scary if you’re not heavily CGI’ing her jaw or running speed, which leaves quite a fowl taste in your mouth after all that buildup. The makeup makes her look unsettling at best, and there’s very little tension in the climax. The flighty bond between the sisters was barely developed as it took a backseat to Schaffer’s conflict with her parents, who are forgotten by the film just as the climax begins.

The film Cuckoo has a promising start, but Schaffer’s character and the poor pacing takes the wind out of the film, and leads to a less than satisfying conclusion. There’s something to be said about the concept, Schaffer’s acting, and the cinematography, but nothing significant or redeeming enough.

I rate this film

YMMV

I watched it on Hulu, which unintentionally turns out to be a pretty decent bird pun.

Post Script

If you’ve decided to watch the film, then I encourage you to come back and read this article I found. It does a great job of explaining the metaphorical aspects of this movie. I allude to them a bit in my review, but as I said, I didn’t think they were convincing enough.