Kalyn CorriganCuckoo, the latest aural nightmare from horror filmmaker Tilman Singer, opens with two tall skinny Val Lewton-esque shadows of a couple fighting, their projected limbs reaching up toward the ceiling of a darkened hallway while the real inhabitants quarrel below. As they bicker, the camera switches over to the bedroom of a young girl, who writhes violently in twisted sheets, seemingly unable to control her motor functions. The girl twitches and the pair argue in the background, but suddenly, a new sound emerges: an ear-piercing screech in the form of a bird call. As if possessed by a siren’s song, the girl rises from her bed, her movements growing more erratic, and drifts outside, toward the calling emanating from deep within the woods. Shaking all over, drawn in by the thrall, the girl shudders and inexplicably darts straight into the darkness. The enveloping thicket swallows her whole as she disappears into the endless black.
Singer, who first made a name for himself winning awards on the festival circuit and eventually landing a home on Shudder (AMC’s subscription service for horror) with the hypnotic creeper Luz in 2018, is back with yet another otherworldly stunner that straddles the line between real and hallucinatory. The film follows an angsty 17-year-old girl named Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), who reluctantly leaves America after her mother’s passing to move with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), his new wife Beth (Jessica Henwick) and their mute daughter Alma (Mila Lieu) to Germany, where the parents are busy building a new resort in the Bavarian Alps. Upon their arrival, they meet Herr König (played by a wickedly hilarious Dan Stevens), who takes a special interest in Alma, and offers Gretchen a receptionist job at the front desk of the hotel, but warns her not to stay after dark. Naturally, Gretchen disobeys her new boss immediately, basking in the naivete of teen rebellion. She quickly regrets it. While pedaling home on her bicycle, Gretchen blocks out the night with large noise-canceling headphones, zooming down tree-lined streets in a fog of oblivion. Unbeknownst to her, a dark figure follows in hot pursuit, its bony claw stretching out sharp talons just behind her ear.
(Courtesy of NEON)
A native to the land himself, Singer is well aware of Germany’s affiliation with magical realism and hopes to use those associations to his advantage. “Thinking about it, the fairy tale aspect just organically snuck in, from what I had in my brain from childhood on,” he recalls. “I knew we had to go there, and I wanted to toy with that.” The director adds, “I love being in the Alps. It’s a great place, but it also has a presence, a feeling. It’s very dramatic.”
Jagged rocks scramble up stony hills and melt into rounded boulders like knuckles on an angry fist. Tall canopies tower over gloomy paths, hinting at an all-consuming darkness underneath. It’s not hard to see how someone could visit the Alps and leave its dreamy scenery with a sense of mysticism and a story to tell. The birthplace of myriad folklore, the breathtaking mountain range is also home to another piece of iconography: the cuckoo bird. Symbolic of new beginnings, it’s no surprise that when it came time for the filmmaker to start working on his sophomore project, Singer chose to center his latest story about a misplaced newcomer around the metaphorical magic of the feathered friend.
“Cuckoo birds, they lay their eggs into the nests of other bird species, and then let them raise their offspring, which is an insane process,” explains Singer. “I learned that when I was a child. It’s like in Germany, you have the cuckoo clocks, and it’s sort of our bird here, right? That’s everywhere. But you forget about how insane it is, and how significant it feels. And then I watched a documentary about cuckoo birds in England, and this image of third host parents feeding a cuckoo chick that is not theirs, and they don’t abandon their nest, they stick to it. That had a beauty in the horror, a sort of hopefulness in this disastrous, horrific thing – because all of their offspring, they’re dead. Their eggs get kicked out of the nest. And I couldn’t let it go. It just stuck with me. And then at some point, I was like, okay, how can I do a human story with that in mind?” At that moment, Singer knew what the basis of his next film would be.
(Courtesy of NEON)
The director’s unique brand of filmmaking favors an experimental approach as opposed to a strict linear narrative. In other words, if you’re looking for a third-act monologue that spoon-feeds an explanation, much in the style of a James Bond villain or a Wes Craven character, you won’t find it here. “I want to have a clear understanding of where characters go before I start really writing,” he says, “But I have a strong emotional feeling that I want to convey, and I try to stick to that. That’s most important for me. I think that’s why it comes out the way it does.”
In Hitchcock’s 1963 classic film The Birds, the real threat in Bodega Bay is the locals’ unwelcoming attitude towards outsiders, like Tippi Hedren’s Melanie Daniels. The winged attackers merely act as a personification of the citizens’ inner turmoil and blackened hearts, bringing their bigotry to the surface in a hyperbolic, violent fashion. Similarly, Singer’s Cuckoo assigns a certain level of significance to the fowl. “The birds, sort of as a creature, maybe also as a mythological creature, did so much for me when I was writing this,” recalls Singer. “The process, like the breeding process of the cuckoo birds, obviously, that is a thing that I took from nature. I would say it’s also kind of a coming-of-age story that we have, where the chicks are leaving the nest and learning to fly. I know how cliché that sounds, but I think it’s fundamentally very connected. When we think about growing up, we think about it as leaving the nest and becoming an adult.”
The commitment to the bird allegory is evident in the production design as well. With wood-paneled buildings perched in tall trees resembling the makings of a nest, the large glass windows are almost like “aquariums or terrariums,” which Singer purposely places “opposite to the woods, so it’s always there in the shot,” giving the feeling of nature “creeping up” and “taking over the culture.” The interiors, however, provide much more yonic imagery: “It’s oddly fleshy. You know, you have those pink tones, and it’s sort of a mix of a nest and a womb.”
(Courtesy of NEON)
In one of the scariest scenes of the year, there’s a moment in the first act where Gretchen is attacked by a mysterious figure, but nobody believes her. Distracted with his new daughter and overall apathetic toward his first born, Luis dismisses Gretchen’s claims about a strange woman in a trenchcoat stalking the grounds of the resort, all but encouraging his child to run away. The rejection Gretchen faces from her family, in comparison with the treatment of her more traditionally feminine sister, combines with the overarching theme of breeding to open up a conversation about acting in compliance with assigned gender roles. This idea is pushed even further by the design of Gretchen’s assailant, whose appearance bears a striking resemblance to that of the aggressor in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. According to Singer, however, he was aiming more for someone with more of a funny face. “The concrete example that I gave costume and makeup was Audrey Hepburn in Charade,” Singer tells me. “She has the trenchcoat, the scarf and the sunglasses. I love that woman. But it was important that she was like a ghostly character. It was important that she felt like an image of a female beauty standard from the past, from a bygone era, from something that is gone. Something haunting.”
In the spirit of keeping the past alive, Singer opted to capture his movie on 35mm as opposed to shooting digitally. “It was more of a go-to at this point, because we never shot anything digital,” Singer comments, referencing his debut Luz, which was shot on 16mm. “I learned to appreciate the workflow so much since I was in art school. I learned shooting on 16mm and you know, how cumbersome it can be. You have to plan really well, and you don’t have many takes because it’s expensive. All of these things are very positive things that make it harder. And I think it should be hard. I think you should kind of struggle to make it.”
Centering his story around Hunter Schafer was a bold move, considering it’s technically her first time leading a project, but Singer knew in his bones she was the right choice after seeing her audition tape. “The way she could tap into this emotional space within her, and how connected she felt to the role — I knew she was the right actor for the role.”
(Courtesy of NEON)
Singer cast Schafer two years before they actually got to shoot the movie due to COVID repeatedly postponing the film. In the downtime, Singer gifted Schafer a butterfly knife, which she would later use as a prop for her character. By the time filming finally rolled around, Schafer was an adept knife wielder, bass player, singer and had even learned sign language, further earning her spot. “We had to put all those very tough scenes in the beginning, because we shot this family house first, as a set,” Singer remembers. “All of that happened in the first week, and she had to do some heavy lifting. When I saw her doing that, I was like, okay, this is actually going to be great. This is going to be really special. She has the power to really channel the movie and the emotionality of the movie.”
Impeccable sound design has become a trademark for director Singer, whose work has a record for pure sonic mayhem. “A lot of people point out that sound is so important to me,” Singer smiles, “And it is very important to me, but it’s exactly as important to me as any other element of movie making. I just think, sometimes, I feel like sound is not that important to other filmmakers.” The singsong call from the woods that opens the film echoes throughout the feature, signaling danger, immobilizing patrons. The high-pitched howling fills the air with alarm and creates a distinct warning that a specific monster is swiftly approaching. “I had Simon Waskow, the composer, actually work on the cuckoo call early on,” says Singer, “Because I felt it was very important that it had a musical quality to it. Like a siren song, like something that hypnotizes you.”
Using the vehicle of horror as a road map to dissect bigger emotions, director Singer’s clever inclusion of brood parasitism toys with the idea of nuclear family versus chosen family. “I don’t make any concrete points, and I don’t want to,” he says. “But to me, the movie is a lot about finding your place in life, and also, accepting the good and the bad, and working out how to deal with it. How to deal with the baggage that you’ve been dealt by how you grow up, however you grow up, what you have to do in life, right? Maybe you have to find another family. Maybe you can accept your family that you have.” He adds, “I don’t want to spoil the last shot, but for me, everything is in the last shot. All the flavors sort of mix together. The horror and the acceptance, but also hopefulness, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
NOTE: The advertising disclaimer below does not apply to this article, nor any originating from the LA Weekly editorial department, which does not accept paid links.