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The Exquisite Eeriness of Bird Horrors Part III: ‘Cuckoo’
Bringing my series to a close with Tilman Singer’s deliciously deranged horror mystery that caws its way inside your head
This is the final installment of a three-part series. Read the first and second entries here and here.
There’s a scene early on in Tilman Singer’s wacko horror Cuckoo where a woman guest randomly throws up in the lobby of a German resort hotel in the Bavarian Alps. And she’s not the only one. The receptionist chick casually reacts by saying, “This happens sometimes.” Why, how, or WTF would all be reasonable follow-ups from our 17-year-old protagonist, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer nailing her first lead role), but Bird Horrors tend to work in mysterious(ly messed-up and non-straightforward) ways.
It’s a vital element that makes or breaks this subgenre, and Singer has a knack for marrying the unknown with the unusual — weirdness is a great horror aphrodisiac.
Similarly to Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium, Cuckoo revels in sinister and slimy peculiarities (such as the one above) from the get-go. Yet, as opposed to that film’s thick obscurity, Singer’s script consistently throws in hints to provide a crutch for us to grab onto. He utilizes strange yet intriguing clues early on to…
