Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” is a horror film that‘s unlike anything you’ve ever seen, even though it pays overt homage to its predecessors in the genre. The German writer-director gleefully combines tones, performance styles, mythology, music, a reverence for the natural world and contemporary allegory into an unpredictable chaos, out of which emerges the most fantastically effective creeping dread. One may not entirely understand exactly what is going on in “Cuckoo,” but there’s no denying how it makes you feel: rattled, unsettled, psychically imprinted with unforgettable images and sensations, which is how every good piece of horror should leave its audience.
Singer makes the audience an active, even guilty participant in “Cuckoo,” it’s title a nod to another famous avian-themed horror film by Alfred Hitchcock. At one point, co-star Dan Stevens breaks the fourth wall, looking directly into the lens, talking to a character on the other side of a surveillance camera, but essentially speaking to us, the audience, reminding us how wonderful it is that we’ve been able to witness the terrifying events that have unfolded. It’s akin to that moment in “The Birds” when a character looks into the camera and declares, “I think you’re the cause of all this.
” That participatory knowingness is imbued into the cinematography itself, executed by Paul Faltz on 35mm with a look that alternates between shadowy fear and gauzy fantasy. The prowling camera makes c.