Not enough movies are set in secluded mountain resorts. They’re environments that are uniquely capable of eliciting emotions like fear, restlessness, and — above all else — paranoia. Emotions, in other words, that form the foundation of any great thriller or horror story.
No movie has, of course, ever utilized a mountainside resort as well as The Shining , which uses sinister ghosts and tragic domestic strife to turn a sprawling, mansion-like hotel into a suffocating source of intense cabin fever. Many films since have unsuccessfully tried to replicate that classic’s singularly unsettling effect, but few have truly seized on the brilliance of its setting. Cuckoo does the latter, and wisely avoids committing the former mistake.
It’s an imperfect film where the resolutions prove less satisfying than the buildup to them. The latest thriller from Luz writer-director Tilman Singer is, nonetheless, undeniably the product of a storyteller with an unconventional style and a penchant for capturing the uncanny. Those two talents are employed to impressive effect in Cuckoo , an eerie thriller soaked in paranoia that is greatly elevated by the extremely game performances of its two leads and Singer’s sharp rendering of its central locale.
Cuckoo exists in a world of crooked perspectives and slanted lines — one where shadows don’t just stretch and twist, but also reach toward you. This is made apparent in the film’s exquisitely composed opening image, in which a staircas.