Cuckoo is the weirdest movie of 2024, so why is no one talking about it?
There's a new horror movie in UK cinemas and it's one of the most outlandish films of the year. But its release has been barely a whimper.
New horror movie Cuckoo was released in the UK last weekend. It's got some great reviews out of its festival run and its US release earlier this month, as well as recognisable stars in Euphoria breakout Hunter Schafer and Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens. But you probably didn't see it.
And that's not your fault. Cuckoo spread its wings in British cinemas with barely a flutter, thanks to lacklustre promotion and a disappointingly narrow release. Stevens himself called out the film's distributor in an Instagram story last week, writing: "Just a reminder to @focusfeatures that you're supposed to be releasing CUCKOO in UK theaters tomorrow..."
Stevens is right to be a little irked. I remember seeing trailers for Cuckoo months ago, complete with lavish festival review quotes praising its originality and madness. But those trailers stopped long before this week, allowing the buzz to fade away just as it should've been at its highest.
That's not to mention the fact that the nearest cinema to me showing it in its first week of release was half an hour's drive away, even though I live in a decent-sized city. That cinema had just a single showing, in a small room at just about the latest possible timeslot. It felt like a movie that was being buried.
Box office analysts Comscore told Yahoo on Thursday that Cuckoo has so far earned a pretty dismal ￡154,000 in UK cinemas, from 215 locations. That's just over ￡700 per location. The previous weekend, the re-release of Coraline — a 15-year-old movie — took just shy of eight times Cuckoo's total.
Read more: Hunter Schafer doesn't like being called a 'scream queen' (BANG Showbiz)
It's actually worth having a little bit of sympathy for Focus Features on this because Cuckoo is a tough film to sell. Writer-director Tilman Singer's first English-language feature is completely and defiantly uncategorisable, escalating from simply bizarre in its first act to utterly deranged by the time the credits roll.
The story begins with Schafer's character Gretchen travelling with her father, step-mother, and half-sister to a remote German resort. Gretchen is reluctant about all of this, having recently moved in with her dad following the death of her mum.
The resort's enigmatic boss Herr K?nig — Stevens chewing scenery through an outrageous accent — gives her a job, but things soon hit the fan. Gretchen's sister starts having seizures and she herself is being pursued by a terrifying, hooded woman.
Read more: ‘Cuckoo’ Is Hunter Schafer’s New Horror Movie. ‘Batshit’ Would Be a Better Title (Rolling Stone)
If that sounds absurd, it's only an amuse-bouche for the sheer anarchy of the final act — in which the true meaning of that title becomes clear. There's gore aplenty, a tangled supernatural mythos — still somehow maddeningly opaque despite multiple exposition dumps — and plot turns that recall the grotesque early work of David Cronenberg in his 1970s and 1980s heyday.
Not all of this works, it's fair to say. Singer turns the madness dial a few notches too far and it's only the believable grit of Schafer's excellent performance that holds the train on its tracks at all. But for its first hour or so, Cuckoo is just a rock-solid horror movie, featuring some genuine chill-down-the-spine jump scares and a palpable atmosphere of unease that screams 'something is seriously f***ing wrong here'.
With this in mind, its near-silent UK release is very dispiriting. In a summer packed with mega-blockbusters from huge franchises, Cuckoo is a rare example of a completely unique film willing to let its freak flag fly in the best way, for better and indeed for worse. It deserves to find an audience of game horror fans.
Read more: Cuckoo review: Hunter Schafer is a deadpan horror heroine for the ages (The Independent)
And actually, it almost certainly will find that audience. In six months or so, when Cuckoo lands on one of the big streaming platforms, people will stumble upon it and discover its oddball secrets. Entertainment websites all over the world will be running articles about how a "crazy new horror movie is making waves on Netflix".
That movie will be Cuckoo, and it will finally be appreciated by those whose tastes are weird enough for it. Cuckoo isn't just a title; it's a statement of intent.
Cuckoo is in UK and US cinemas now.
