As I’ve alluded to in the past, the Vibes-Based Horror Movie is in vogue, in which logic, reason, thematic construction, tonal resonance, storytelling coherence, and all-around scrutability (I know this isn’t a word, but roll with me here) take a backseat to the smooth sailing of a “just roll with it, bro.” It’s interesting how you could read it as a reaction to the Ari Asters of the world, who have made hollow yet heavily manicured features that have some tonal command yet the substance of cotton candy. Vibes-based horror doesn’t even pretend to have that kind of heft, as all it has is the sensory experience. Occasionally, it can be like eating nigiri: A sensory delight, as ephemeral as it is – not physiologically satisfying unless you have a Pomeranian’s stomach, but spiritually so. Movies like Tillman Singer’s Cuckoo lack that satisfaction. You know how an Insomnia Cookies location pumps the smell of their freshly baked wares out into the street? Imagine walking by that and realizing you left your wallet at home. Sure, it smells nice, but you’re just left wanting something that you can’t have.
Singer made waves back in 2018 with his feature debut, Luz, an exorcism picture that doubled as his thesis project for school. At 70 minutes long, it was a blistering ride through hell, an aesthetic experience that didn’t have any pretensions of being anything other than an exploration of former genre styles and their modern echoes. Had Luz been as long as Cuckoo, I doubt Singer would have had the chance to make something like this, stacked with a few Hollywood staples, much less have it purchased for distribution by Neon. But Hunter Schafer’s name carries weight, and it’s a lot like Hot Summer Nights was for Timothee Chalamet – a movie that would probably be outshined in six months by whatever else the star did but was a decent enough vehicle for them at the time that buyers couldn’t help but notice or have their face take up three-quarters of the space on the poster. She carries the film well, but imagine where she’ll be in six years and where people will know her from. It’s most likely not going to be this, much to the chagrin of Sam Levinson haters like me everywhere.
Cuckoo’s first act could be described as “The Shining At Home:” if there wasn’t already that terrible miniseries that Stephen King prefers, in which we’re introduced to our protagonists. Gretchen (Schafer) is riding in a moving truck through the German Alps, preferring to sit with the handymen rather than her father (Marton Csokas), his new wife (Jessica Henwick), and her half-sister. They’re greeted at their destination – an isolated resort – by the proprietor of the place, Herr Konig (Dan Stevens, relishing the chance to pull the German out once again), who almost immediately rubs Gretchen the wrong way, in ways metaphorically (he constantly mispronounces her name) and literally (he’s got a creepy way of putting his hand on her shoulder). He’s her dad’s new business partner – they are there, after all, to make a new resort in the mountains – and he offers her a part-time job, which she accepts to get the hell away from her family. Meanwhile, weird stuff is happening. It seems that her half-sister is developing psychic powers, a strange woman in a headscarf and trench coat seems to be stalking Gretchen, and it looks like time might be looping itself all over the place. What’s a freshly-traumatized 17-year-old to do? Probably try to skip town with all the cash in the register alongside a cool-seeming French lady (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), at least until Edie Beale over there fucks everything up.
What’s so patently frustrating about what Singer’s crafted here is just how long it takes for anything to get going, with the threadbare aesthetic only going so far as to stoke viewer interest. Schafer is a dynamic and interesting actor, but she’s cast in an angst-ridden role that prevents her from seizing the opportunity, outside of one or two stone-faced reactions that draw laughs late in the film. It feels as if Singer realized that American audiences require a reason to care about what’s going on – an assertation that Longlegs tore to shreds a few weeks ago – and spends the bulk of his time trying to strike the right balance between anhedonic feeling and otherworldly terror. Even Kubrick, with Wendy Carlos on synths, understood that this is a delicate balance to pull off.
This is why both of his leads – Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson – are such vital assets: they are fully drawn characters confronting something that’s well beyond their understanding or ability to resist. Think also of how he prioritizes Danny’s view of the world, with the snippets of iconic imagery we glimpse in his extrasensory perceptions of what’s around him, much like we might puzzle over a strange and weird image from childhood decades later. There’s none of that here, with Singer assuming that the mere presence of his characters ensures the suggestion that they have inner lives or that their viewpoints are relatable to the audience. Many people played in dinosaur-bass bands that couldn’t strike a melody together if they tried, but that’s the core of Gretchen’s personality once you pry away the trauma. She’s just aimlessly floating through the weird, which is a trap even the most austere vibes-based horror films avoid falling into.
What’s left is cliché done in the most obvious fashion: There’s a conspiracy at the resort, gross and icky suggestions of what exactly is going on there, and a third act reveal that comes way too late to be meaningful or to sate our curiosity, all rendered with such little detail for anything to really stick in one’s imagination. The mystery here is dull, not enticingly creepy, which is about as unforgivable a sin in vibes-based horror as you can make. The suggestion of smallness and the resultant lack of control – an attribute lifted from the notions of the sublime in weird and cosmic fiction – isn’t present, and things wrap up in a relatively neat fashion. But it’s not fun or involving enough to transcend its subgenre and arrive in the upper echelons of plot-centric horror storytelling, with the vagueness being the only asset to preserve what precious little interest remains in the viewer until the credits hit. All one’s left with from Cuckoo is the distinct sense that there should have been something more to everything, even if it might have wound up disappointing – at least, one could say that Singer tried and failed rather than coasted on the vibes.