Cuckoo… for a movie that started out with a lot of yelling in German, it only got mildly more disturbing.
Dan Stevens–who I knew mostly from Legion–has been popping up in all sorts of films over the last few years. He’s super creepy in this one as a rich German dude who owns the resort/nature preserve where this story takes place.
Hunter Schafer–who I only know from the first season of Euphoria (because I haven’t gotten around to the second season yet)–was already someone I was sure could act, now that’s just definitely confirmed. She’s the way out of place daughter of a now remarried dude who’s brought her, his wife, and young daughter to the afore-mentioned resort/nature preserve.
If you know anything about birds and watched the trailer, you should have a good idea of what the plot here is… because I guessed it pretty solidly just from those things.
To make sure you understand what’s going on, though, they have two big bunches of exposition in the back half of the film where they explain it. Both times it’s kind of an odd exposition dump. The second time even more so.
Granted, I don’t know how they could have totally avoided at least one exposition dump… we’re not talking about things that happen all that quickly. But maybe, just maybe, it would have been better to let the audience figure it out from the title? Or, y’know, the two other times they explained cuckoos in the film itself.
It feels like there’s a lot of repetition in the story and scenes. I don’t know if that’s on purpose. If it is, I’d like to know the point, because it’s lost on me. Maybe I’m not German enough?
The performances are pretty good. The cinematography is beautiful. The core idea is very disturbing. There are even some choice bits of soundtrack that are really cool.
But the overall execution here is lacking… it’s less than the sum of its parts.
I wouldn’t say it’s a bad movie. Not by a long shot. But it certainly didn’t land with me the way I hoped it would.
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