Those stupid clocks... Switzerland deserves to be invaded
dir: Tilman Singer
2024
Cuckoos, as represented in movies, are the worst birds in the world. I don’t mean how they’re physically represented, I mean the process by which they get by in this crazy, turvy topsy world.
By now absolutely everyone, even the people that don’t watch exactly all the films that I watch knows that the reason why cuckoos are so hated is because the mummy cuckoo lays her eggs in the nest of a different species of bird, without even asking. The cuckoo hatches, mum is long gone, never to return, and then proceeds to push out the other eggs or hatchlings, leaving it the sole recipient of its adoptive parent’s hunting and gathering. This can go on an absurd length of time, such that the cuckoo has grown larger than its nest and carers.
Then, I dunno, it eats them or something.
It’s not only the fact that it murders the other babies. It’s not just that their evolutionary strategy is called “brood parasitism”, which sounds inherently evil. It’s not only the fact that it robs these parents of their efforts, tricking them into devoting all their time and energies into furthering the survival of a creature they’re not even genetically related to, it’s that it just seems so nasty.
And yet this is just a part of nature. We are applying a human standard of morality, projecting it onto a species that couldn’t understand what we’re saying and probably wouldn’t give a fuck even if it did understand. We’re anthropomorphising them, because there’s something about what they do that deeply gives us the ick.
The makers of this film take that ick and construct a whole film around it, hoping that we’ll be even more grossed out that by what we see in nature documentaries.
And they’re probably right. This is a film that starts off flat and unsettling and then becomes less comprehensible as it goes, becoming progressively more baffling and gross.
It’s a horror flick, no doubt about that, but for most of the time it’s constructed as more of a mystery, one which I’m am not entirely sure benefits from either explanation or revelation later on.
It also doesn’t go down the usual track of a lead (usually American) character in a European locale being shunned by the locals and uncovering some horrible witches coven / murder corporation / Catholic Church involvement in a number of gruesome deaths, all the while trying to get by despite all the red / blue colour cues and aggressive violin strings.
Instead, American teenager Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move with her dad (Marton Csokas), his new wife (Jessica Henwick) and her little half-sister to the Bavarian Alps for reasons. She is entirely unhappy about this move, and nothing she sees at this resort type place allays any of her concerns or fears.
So, surly teen mode engaged. The proprietor of the resort is a very courteous, very creepy chap called Mr Konig (Dan Stevens). He offers her a job, but is also very cagey about what hours she should work, and when she should be indoors by
Because…
Now, of course, strange things start to happen. Gretchen especially gets more banged up as the film progresses, ending up in a strange arm brace that makes her look part cyborg. But she’s also got a bandage on her head, and half a jacket over the other shoulder. I found that whole costuming business far more off-putting and scary than the other unnatural stuff that is to come.
A strange sound can be heard, usually in the evenings, which makes some people throw up, others experience a strange loop by which they re-experience the preceding five seconds or so multiple times over and over again, and other people just do… crazy shit. We see an image of an ululating throat when this weirdness is transpiring. Invariably, at the end of one of these sessions, Gretchen is physically harmed, unconscious or worse.
As a mystery, I think on the most part it works. That is, until we find out what is actually going on. After that, it falls the fuck apart in absurd ways. People do dumb things without any rhyme or reason, but because “well that’s what’s needed to get the flick to some sort of ending”. To say that the explanation is somewhat less than satisfactory implies that I think my satisfaction is relevant or important. It is not. I am not that self-centred. But I also would have liked some kind of resolution that maybe didn’t feel this simple-minded.
Are there two minor characters you don’t know what to do with? Why not have a character randomly kill them, for no reason. Have two other characters standing around with guns? Why not have them shoot each other, as a way to tick them off the list of loose ends?
As for the way these beings are represented: They’re creepy, there’s no doubt about that. They are nearly human, but they depend on a similar evolutionary strategy to those species of cuckoo that mimic the young of other species in order to survive to adulthood. And yet, unlike the cuckoo, these beings screech like banshees, randomly make women throw up and try to impregnate them with a handful of clear goo.
Speaking as an absolute expert on evolutionary biology and genetics (or, at the very least, to point out that I have as much expertise and academic qualification in this field as Dr Jordan B Peterson does, which is zero), that’s not an effective strategy. Plenty of birds detect cuckoo young and fling them out. The cuckoos that do what they do constantly update their strategy in order to best link with the types of other birds they can best skate along with for long enough to survive. If they did dumb shit like taking over other people’s brains or creating time loops or impregnating them with handfuls of goo, they’d be detected too early and would be killed / deprived of nutrients / not be loved as much and would never make it to adulthood, and therefore their unfortunate species would die out.
Yes, I’m being silly, but those are the sorts of ideas I was having when I was watching it play out, towards the end. Your weird humanoid cuckoo species wouldn’t last long enough to procreate if you’re going to act all scary and weird all the time. So if you’re going to wear a weird 70s trenchcoat and a headscarf, and cheap sunnies, and attack Gretchen all the time for no good reason, knocking her off her bike or causing her to have a car crash, sure it keeps her at the resort, but how does that make any sense? It’s definitely not going to see you win in the genetic fitness stakes.
Those thoughts were more interesting to me than what I was watching, but that’s an unfair standard to hold the rest of the world to. Thematically, beyond the weird theme of conserving this weird species at this resort, there’s maybe the stuff about Gretchen coming to terms with her father’s new family, and how much she resents all of them, and how, in some ways, since she’s constantly in conflict with them, it almost seems like she’s the interloper who doesn’t belong within the new family unit: she is the cuckoo, though she’s less a parasite and more an unwilling prisoner.
There’s some stuff with her actual mother which, I dunno, felt a bit pointless and stupid. The second a character listens to a recording of a person’s voice over and over again the audience isn’t left with the impression that the person will swoop in and save the day: it’s almost proof positive that the person referred to is dead.
Gretchen is also, to be unfair, a drip of a character. Surly teen is fine as a starting point, but it rarely if ever progresses to anything else or anything deeper as the film traipses along. That she eventually decides she doesn’t hate her half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) is to her character’s credit, but, really, it was hard to figure out what she was doing and why a lot of the time.
As is often the case with Dan Stevens in any flick, however high or low budget, he is singularly great as this sinister yet charming character. His German accent is phenomenal, his German dialogue delivery is perfect, and he is probably the best thing in the whole flick, in the way he almost stole the show in another horror flick from earlier in the year, being the corrupt cop he played in Abigail. Every single line delivery in this is impeccably polite yet endlessly threatening. He does more to creep out Gretchen, even just from how he pronounces her name, than any of the monster / cuckoo / human hybrid bullshit shenanigans.
I applaud his work, and I don’t blame him when the flick turns stupid towards the end. I blame the director, but then I also hope this is exactly the flick he wanted it to be. He seems like a strange dude, which is to his credit, because he made a strange flick that doesn’t entirely work but which I somehow enjoyed along the way.
Cuckoo? No, buddy, Cuck-You!
7 times don’t you point that goo at me out of 10
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“That’s a fucking weird way to put it!” – no disagreement from me - Cuckoo
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