What in the name of bird flu is this movie trying to say?
Photo: Neon/Everett Collection
Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Cuckoo.
Under most circumstances, a trip to the Alps sounds like a dreamy vacation. But in German director Tilman Singer’s shrieking horror feature, Cuckoo, an Overlook Hotel–like mountain resort sends Hunter Schafer down a terrifying, puke-filled rabbit hole. The lesson here is twofold: Always read hotel reviews before booking, and never, under any circumstances, travel anywhere with your emotionally unavailable father and his new family. But what the hell was going on with that bonkers ending?
In its first two acts, Cuckoo is all about sibling rivalry, parental neglect, and the cyclical nature of grief. But then, Herr König — our creepy, Pied Piper–like hotelier played by Dan Stevens with a thick German accent — whips out his little recorder to lure us all into a deliciously ridiculous finale. Somewhere between the chloroform, the introduction of a humanoid bird-woman species, and a prolonged shoot-out throughout which one character keeps a cigarette dangling from his mouth, you might feel a little lost. What in the name of bird flu is this movie trying to say and, also, how does literally any of this “brood parasite” thing work?
The lore here is relatively simple, if underexplained: König runs a resort where a strange species of bird-woman forcibly impregnates unsuspecting vacationgoers. The hybrid women’s sirenlike calls trap victims within earshot in a time loop, rendering them helpless. Schafer plays a sour teenager named Gretchen whose father, Luis (Marton Csokas), is moving their family out to the Alps to help König start a new resort, and in the end, it turns out that his other daughter, Gretchen’s half-sister, Alma (Mila Lieu), is the product of one of these forced “laying ceremonies.”
If you’re familiar with Singer’s first film, Luz, in which a cabdriver tries to escape a possessed woman, you likely went in knowing that Cuckoo would end with more questions than answers. Still, there are some fascinating themes and insights to pluck from this flighty plot. Let’s try and unpack them one by one.
What is Cuckoo actually about?
At first, Cuckoo feels like a grief allegory. Gretchen’s mother recently died, and tellingly, we first see her riding up to her new digs in the movers’ truck while Luis drives ahead with his wife, Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their daughter, Alma.
Over and over, Cuckoo shows us how isolated Gretchen feels with her father’s family. When a freaky hooded blonde woman in a trench coat attacks Gretchen, her dad insists she must have simply fallen off her bike. Alma, meanwhile, commands all of Luis’s attention when mysterious seizures land her in the hospital. When a doctor says that abrupt changes in the family might have caused the brain trauma, Luis blames Gretchen. Never mind that he’s the one who has chosen to move his family to the Alps and start a new resort with this creepy König guy.
We know early on that there’s something strange and probably supernatural about the hooded blonde woman. Whenever she shrieks, the camera zooms in on her bleating throat while everyone who can hear her finds themselves reliving the same few seconds over and over. One could argue that these hypnotic moments invoke a common trope of being stuck in time as a metaphor for grief.
It’s unclear at first what role König plays in all this, but he is obviously the well-coiffed mastermind; the woman seems to respond whenever he plays his recorder. Eventually, after he kidnaps Gretchen, it becomes clear that he’s the one orchestrating these “laying ceremonies” to preserve the species. From there, the film starts playing with new themes like bodily autonomy and nature versus nurture. (Is Alma destined to become a monster because her mother is one of these bird-women, or can she decide her own fate?)
So, this hotel is overrun by bird-women who are basically laying their eggs inside of women?
Yep! A detective named Henry (Jan Bluthardt) explains it to Gretchen: Cuckoos are “brood parasites” that lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, allowing those birds to raise their offspring for them. The bird-women hybrids at this freaky place do the same thing with König’s help.
Why does König want to help the bird-ladies spread their spawn?
They have supernatural powers, and he fancies himself a “preservationist,” and … well, that’s about all we know. He just really loves these “homo cuckooridai,” I guess! (For the record, I have no idea if I spelled that correctly, but I couldn’t not mention the name, because it’s hilarious.)
How do these “laying ceremonies” work? Like, physiologically?
That is super-unclear. Basically, König blows his recorder, a bird-woman comes and does her shrieky thing, and then the woman within earshot falls into this convulsive trance where she sits on the bed and rubs her own legs while the bird-woman reaches toward her with some kind of goo on her hand. We never actually see how it works from there.
Wait, what kind of goo? Is it, like …?
All I can tell you is that the shrieking lady’s hand is covered in goo, and there’s a puddle beneath her on the floor. Make of that what you will.
How does this place even find guests? Do they somehow still have a great Expedia rating?
It’s hard to say, because the resort looks gorgeous, but if I saw guests wandering around vomiting in the lobby with no one to help, I’d probably mention that in the review!
Speaking of aesthetics, why does König have this whole lavish prison set up for Gretchen, complete with Ikea furniture, when it seems like his homo cuckoos or whatever spend barely any time there?
I don’t know, but I envy the sunken living room situation they’ve got going on.
Also, didn’t he lure her into this prison by offering to drive her to the train station? Wouldn’t that have seemed suspicious, given his whole sketchy vibe?
Right? Gretchen’s spent the entire movie watching this man like a hawk, and she wouldn’t let him pick her up to take her home after her night shifts behind the reception desk, but she suddenly trusts him to take her to the train station? Please.
And Gretchen’s dad is in on all of this?
It seems that way! And so are the local doctors, who sedate Alma’s mom because they’ve decided it’s time for Alma to reunite with her bird-lady mom. But then, König shows up and shoots them both because I guess they’ve been clandestinely saving records they weren’t supposed to.
Yeah, speaking of which — didn’t that detective, Henry, shoot him? How is he even alive?
If there’s one rule in this movie, it’s that you have to kill someone at least a few times before they actually die-die. Consider also: Henry springing back to action after Gretchen stabs him multiple times, and that bird-lady in the goggles getting crushed by a library-size bookcase and still surviving.
Why was she the only one of these women wearing goggles? What do they do?
No clue, but they look cool.
Also, why do all of the bird-women wear those blonde wigs? Is this The Witches? Are they insecure?
Again, I wish I knew. In goggle lady’s case, she’s bald underneath.
Is there a chance that Gretchen’s dead mother is somehow one of the bird-ladies?
You know, I actually thought about that in the end when Gretchen snatched the wig off of Alma’s mother, a.k.a. goggle lady, and looked at her with an expression of recognition. She also yells “Mom’s dead” to König toward the end, which felt like conspicuously odd phrasing. But it’s really unclear.
Either way, why does Alma look like her birth mother, Beth, and not any of the bird-women, if she’s not really Beth’s biological child?
Great question. 🤷
Also, at the very end, when Gretchen carries Alma out through the shoot-out between König and Henry, why wouldn’t Henry just shoot Gretchen to make sure Alma can’t leave if he’s convinced she’s going to grow into some monster?
I mean, he did promise Gretchen he’d protect her, but I have no idea why he’d keep that promise to a total stranger if stopping this whole operation is soooo important to him. Either way, when they get to the end of their little catwalk, Gretchen tells Alma to do the shrieky thing, she figures out how to do it, and they leave.
Why wouldn’t she just have Alma do that before they left the closet?
That would have been smarter! But it all worked out in the end. They drive off with this hotel guest named Ed who Gretchen made out with earlier, and while they rest in safety, we look at Alma’s twitching ears — a sign that while Gretchen believes more in the “nurture” side of things than “nature,” Alma retains the potential for destruction.
