Hunter Schafer plays 17-year-old Gretchen in Cuckoo.Elevation Pictures
Cuckoo
Written and directed by Tilman Singer
Starring Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens and Marton Csokas
Classification N/A; 103 minutes
Opens in theatres Aug. 9
To some, Dan Stevens is best known as the dearly departed Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey. But to less, let’s say, refined audiences, the British actor has become a saviour of schlock, the kind of daring performer who can elevate the messiest of genre outings to a level of wild-card delight.
This year alone, the actor has given the entirety of himself toward making the junky fare of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Abigail feel far heartier than initially cooked up. Stevens is a mischievous and sly presence who knows the limits of his material – and proceeds to stretch, break and redefine those constraints.
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And with the new thriller Cuckoo, the prankster looks to make a hat trick out of his elevated shtick. Which is a blessed thing, given that writer-director Tilman Singer’s new film doesn’t have all that much else – either of the fun or frightening variety – to fill its frames.
The film opens in the German Alps, where 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) has been dragged by her family after her father (Jan Bluthardt) took on a new job. Alongside her uncaring stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and kind half-sister (Mila Lieu), Gretchen struggles to adjust to her surroundings, including her part-time gig at the gift shop of the resort her father is now managing.
Quickly, a series of strange, violent encounters engulf Gretchen’s world. Are they coincidental, supernatural or something in between? The answer to Gretchen’s plight seems to rest in the hands of Mr. Konig, her father’s sinister new boss, played with zest, zeal and triple-z zaniness by Stevens.
Smoothly alternating between English and German – a linguistic talent first revealed by the performer in the 2021 German sci-fi comedy I’m Your Man – Stevens’s performance keeps Gretchen and the film itself on their toes. There is a tap-dancing quality to the actor’s work – he has to deliver both flair and focus, keeping the spotlight at once on him and the stage of the story itself. But there is only so much fancy footwork that Stevens can offer as Singer’s film speeds further and further off the rails.
The central mystery to Cuckoo is not so much a whodunit but a whatchamacallit, and even that central enigma yields little in the way of surprise or shock. Certainly, it’s fun to see Schafer, best known for her work on HBO’s teenage-wasteland series Euphoria, match wits with Stevens, including a gnarly sequence of knife play. But neither actor can figure out where their director is going with all this madness or where he might want to be at any given moment, tonally and thematically. It’s enough to drive anybody, even the king of kook Stevens – well, you know.