Film review: ‘Cuckoo’ is a stylish nightmare with a wonderfully sinister Dan Stevens

Let’s get one thing straight first: I don’t fully understand everything that happens in “Cuckoo,” a new indie horror in theaters Friday.

This might be more of a problem for me than storytelling, but there are a lot of strange things going on at this particular alpine resort. It’s run by a bespectacled German hotelier named Herr König, played with unhinged menace by Dan Stevens.

Some of the occurrences are underexplained, others underexplored. Herr König seems particularly concerned about things that happen after dark, but not so much about the guests who enter the reception and warehouse in a vomiting stupor. Are they drunk? Sick? Should someone help them? All we get is: “It happens.” The hospital is also strangely empty. Sound vibrations often ripple across the land, causing scenes to repeat themselves until they reach a violent crescendo. And no one seems to listen or care about anything 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) has to say, no matter how angry she gets. The rapid escalation of his injuries and his father’s growing disinterest border on comedy.

Ambiguity can be wonderful for mystery and worldbuilding; It can also be frustrating. And most of the time, detailed explanations make everything more boring. “ Cuckoo ” dives into all of the above. Still, it’s undeniably fascinating, original and even occasionally funny, in a very twisted and disturbed way in which laughter is your involuntary response to something horrible. In her captivating lead performance, Schafer really goes through this, both physically and emotionally.

It also features Stevens wearing tiny rimless glasses with sinister, Scandinavian monochromatic clothing, and a screaming ghoul with Hitchcockian glamor in a hooded trench coat and oval white-framed sunglasses. It’s rarely a bad idea for a horror film to lean into style, and “Cuckoo” fully commits.

“Cuckoo” is the brainchild of German director Tilman Singer, but credit also goes to Singer’s predecessors: the works of David Lynch and Dario Argento among them. Gretchen is a reluctant resident of the idyllic, modern home with her estranged father (Martin Csokas), her stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and her mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). She leaves increasingly desperate messages on her mother’s answering machine in the United States.

It’s certainly an exaggerated but fitting portrait of a new family where the remnants of the old are treated as a nuisance. When Alma begins convulsing during the vibrations, which no one but Gretchen seems to remember or recognize, the parents’ attention turns entirely to the young girl. They barely bother to worry about Gretchen’s miraculous survival of a horrific car accident; Alma is in the same hospital because of the episodes.

As with many horrors, the big reveals were, for this reviewer, a bit underwhelming – a strained attempt at a unifying theory for this strange place that ultimately doesn’t add much. And yet the emotional connection to Gretchen and her complex relationship with Alma pays off in unexpected ways.

Furthermore, Stevens deserves special recognition for his contributions to “Cuckoo.” This is a man who could have easily languished in blandly handsome leading man roles and is instead becoming one of our great actors. He’s regularly the best and most memorable part of everything he does, just by his commitment to going there, whether it’s his Hawaiian shirt wearing titan vet in “Godzilla vs. Kong,” his Russian pop star in “Eurovision” or any other of his deranged horror characters. He and Schafer, always a striking presence, make “Cuco” very worthwhile. They exist comfortably in this dreamlike, nightmarish world dreamed up by Singer that is worth watching.

“Cuckoo,” a Neon release in theaters on Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language, brief teen drug use, bloody images, violence.” Running time: 102 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.