Welcome to How Gay Is It?Out's review series where, using our state-of-the-art Eggplant Rating System, we determine just how queer some of pop culture's buzziest films and TV shows are! (Editor's note: this post contains spoilers for Neon's Cuckoo.)
Hunter Schafer is terrific in German writer/director Tilman Singer's new horror/thriller family drama Cuckoo.
Schafer stars in the film as Gretchen, an American teen girl who moves with her father, stepmother, and half-sister to a resort in the German Alps where things quickly go off the rails. The resort is run by Herr König (Dan Stevens), a calm and calculated man who has a layer of quiet violence underneath him
Gretchen was forced to move to Europe with her father after the death of her mother. She doesn't get along well with him, and gets along even worse with her stepmom (played by Jessica Henwick) and her younger half-sister.
In order to pass time at the resort, where something always feels at least a little bit off, Gretchen gets a job at the front desk, and even though she's told to only work during the day, she trades shifts with a coworker and ends up biking home at night.
Herr König calls her at work demanding that she wait there, but Gretchen is stubborn and independent, and she quickly sees that she's being followed and chased by a mysterious woman who emits a sound from her throat that causes Gretchen to experience a time loop.
After Gretchen ends up in the hospital, her parents, influenced by König, don't believe her about the mysterious woman, and she's on her own to try to find out what is truly lurking in the Alps.
Schafer makes a great final girl, and I'd love to see her in more horror from now on. She's got the strength, vulnerability, and magnetism to hold an audience's attention in a film like this where much of her screen time is alone.
Schafer's energy is matched by Dan Stevens, who plays the extremely German and astoundingly creepy Herr König. At first, it seems as though König is simply the caretaker and owner of the resort, but is soon revealed to be actually running a sort of nature preserve for a humanoid species that violently impregnates human women with its eggs, similar to how a real-life cuckoo bird places its eggs in another bird's nest.
As König, Stevens is delightfully unhinged, pronouncing "Gretchen" in new and interesting ways our American minds could've never imagined. His performance leads to some of the film's most fun moments, but also seems held back slightly by the movie itself. I wish he had gotten a little more room to chew the scenery and become the camp villain he deserved to be.
While Cuckoo has a lot of fun in its thrills, there's also a fair amount of confusion and unanswered questions. How much do Gretchen's father and stepmother know about what really goes on at the resort? What happened to them at the end of the film? Why can a cop aim his gun perfectly in one scene only to fire dozens of shots that miss later on?
In a year of standout horror like I Saw the TV Glow, Longlegs, MaXXXine, and A Quiet Place: Day One, Cuckoo might not stand out, but it's definitely worth your time.
But Out wants to know one thing: How gay is it?!?!
Fortunately, the film is pretty gay! Gretchen is a typical alt teen with a bisexual bob and a guitar showing that she's in a band. She's also queer, flirting with, going on a date with, and eventually running away with a woman she meets at the resort. We love a queer final girl! Three out of five eggplants and three out of five stars.
Cuckoo is in theaters starting August 9.
