Halloween 2024: October 27th

Cuckoo (2024)

In 2018, German director Tilman Singer would gain a decent amount of buzz for "Luz." The possession thriller with a twisting narrative and retro soundtrack was quite good, meaning I was already in the bag for Singer's next feature. The director would team with Neon for his follow-up, "Cuckoo." The distributor managed to turn "Longlegs" into a breakout indie hit earlier in the year. With "Cuckoo" dropping a month afterwards, you can tell Neon was hopeful this could be a similar sleeper success. The film had a similarly cryptic advertising campaign, which gave away little about the plot and focused largely on eerie vibes. This didn't quite work out, the film falling just short of its seven million dollar budget at the box office, but "Cuckoo" has still emerged as one of the most notable horror releases of the year. If nothing else, the film continues Dan Stevens' run as 2024's reigning Scream King, after "Abigail" and "Godzilla X Kong."

Teenage Gretchen is still grieving the death of her mother, often leaving messages on her still active answering machine. Her father has moved on much more quickly, marrying Beth and begetting a daughter named Alma. Gretchen's half-sister suffers from a peculiar condition that causes her to have seizures. The family arrives in Bavaria, the father working for the mysterious Herr König to design a hotel. He quickly takes an interest in Gretchen and Alma. He promises to help the younger girl and gets the teenager a job at the front desk. That's when Gretchen notices strange things: Time loops, a hypnotizing shriek from the forest, women having compulsive vomiting. Most prominently, she is pursued by an inhuman seeming woman in a hood and dark glasses. Everyone insists Gretchen is crazy but, with the help of a rogue police detective, she uncovers a bizarre conspiracy. König and her little half-sister are at the center of it. 

There are times when being an obsessive movie nerd with an interest in folklore and biology can be a determent. I mean, it often is generally but, specifically, my own instincts ruined the experience of "Cuckoo" a little. The script keeps the narrative thrust close to its chest for most of the story, which the advertising did little to betray. For its first hour, "Cuckoo" certainly operates as one of those indie horror flicks where weird shit is happening, leading to apparent hallucinations for its heroine, and we don't know why yet. However, I found myself predicting the general direction of the story quickly enough. Mostly because I know what the cuckoo bird is most famous for, aside from fancy clocks. Turn away now if you want to go into "Cuckoo" with the sense of mystery it clearly demands: This is a monster movie. Singer's script is something like a science fiction update of the changeling myth, of fairies leaving their offspring with a normal family until they are old enough to be retrieved. (The script doesn't directly invoke this folklore, which was a missed opportunity, if you ask me.) I am not the kind of person who feels film-watching is a game of trying to outsmart the writer. "Cuckoo" still managed to create a properly off-center ambiance that I could appreciate. However, figuring out what is going on far before the lead characters do does drain a story like this of its suspense some. "Cuckoo" is the kind of movie designed to keep the viewer asking questions until the pivotal reveal. I guess my niche interests happened to put me one step ahead in this case. 

The main impression "Luz" made on me was a narrative structure that jumped around in time and its stylish cinematography. "Cuckoo" shows that Singer clearly has trademarks. The film does not prepare you for the time loops before they occur. In effect, this makes you wonder if the streaming service you're watching the movie on isn't glitching at first. That certainly adds to a strange atmosphere, that the presence of random vomiting spells, long stretches in other language, and weirdo close-ups on reverberating larynxes furthers along. Ultimately, I do think "Cuckoo" is better looking than it is scary. Paul Faltz' cinematography often involves long shots and swerving camera movements. This creates to a number of striking images. Such as a gun in a pillow case bursting into flames, a disorientating car crash, or a series of book shelves falling down like dominos. Singer and his team have the tools to engineer suspense and tension here, which they do succeed at from time to time. However, I would say "Cuckoo" greatly overestimates how frightening a woman with a hood and handkerchief around her head and echoing shrieking sounds are. The former is more goofy than creepy, a horror villain that reminds me of my old bubbe. As for the latter, the noise proved a bit more irritating than I think was intended. 

There's another reason "Cuckoo" didn't hook me as much as I hoped. Gretchen's character arc involves her processing the passing of her mother and accepting Alma as her new family. In an early scene, she specifics that the little girl is only kind of her sister. By the end, the plan is, these two will form a bond. Sadly, I didn't quite buy it. First off, Gretchen and Alma simply don't have that much screen time together, the younger sister remaining in the hospital for much of the runtime. Secondly, Gretchen is a somewhat thorny protagonist. She is frosty to her family, resentful of them. Clearly, her grief has put her in a bad mood. Understandable enough but the script should've made more of an effort to make us feel that pain. Instead, "Cuckoo" is always slightly distance from its characters. It's no fault of the cast. Hunter Schafer is a dependable heroine and I found the way Gretchen gains more injuries as the story goes on to be an amusingly sick joke. Dan Stevens, meanwhile, is a perfectly wicked villain as Herr König, adopting a ridiculous Hans Landa accent and being equal parts sinister, charming, intimidating, and funny in the role. 

Tilman Singer's extremely German sensibilities and a tone that prioritizes unsettling weirdness over anything else might have made "Cuckoo" less entertaining than it could have been. As I said, this is a monster movie and features a fittingly grotesque – if subtle – antagonist in its last act. The movie also ends, much to my delight, with an elaborate shoot-out. When you factor in all the gross-out puking and the chase scenes, the ingredients where here for a fine B-movie. Sadly, horror flicks that balances unironically cheap thrills and deeper ideas are not as common as they used to be. "Cuckoo" isn't bad. It's pretty good at times, honestly. Stevens happily hamming it up as a scheming mad scientist more than justifies the time spent watching. However, a more full-throated approach to the scares and a script more willing to put us in the heroine's head would've improved it substantially. Nevertheless, Singer is clearly a talented guy with an approach all his own. Hopefully he'll nail the delicate balancing act on his next movie. [6/10]

Malpertuis (1971)

Our journey around the world via different country's horror movies concludes in an unexpected place: That cozy little spot along the North Sea, nestled in the Low Countries, known as the Kingdom of Belgium. The Belgians have gifted many fine cultural exports to the globe: René Magritte, Chantal Akerman, the Smurfs, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Despite the proud state of Belgian cinema, the country has not produced too many directors best known for their work in the horror genre. Until the recent emergence of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, there was really only one director from that part of the world you could slap on your overly long Masters of Horror lists. That would be Harry Kümel, whose "Daughters of Darkness" is a dreamy, erotic classic and probably the best lesbian vampire movie. The same year Kümel released that film, he also completed another, more overlooked, but no less distinctive picture. Based on Jean Ray's 1943 gothic novel, "Malpertuis" did see release abroad in the early seventies, probably owing to an above-the-title appearance from Orson Welles. Usually, however, this was in a dubbed version entitled "The Legend of Doom House" that was missing a half-hour. Kümel's two hour director's cut has circulated widely for many years now, the film gaining more defenders and now being regarded as a cult classic in its own right. 

A young sailor named Jan pulls into port. He leaves his rowdy friends behind in search of his childhood home and his sister, Nancy. After discovering his home burned, he follows what he thinks is Nancy into a night club, where a man bludgeons him into unconsciousness. Jan awakens with his sister in Malpertuis, the sprawling gothic manor owned by his occultist uncle, Cassavius. The old man is sickly and knows the end is near, preparing to divide his estate up among his heirs. He hopes Jan will take up his position as head of the household and leader of the group of eccentrics that call Malpertuis their home. However, the inheritance comes with one condition: All rights to the family fortune will be voided if they leave the castle grounds. Jan is drawn deeper into the mystery of the home, exploring its endless corridors and secret passageways. He falls for a beautiful but strange woman named Euryale, who leads him towards the unsettling truth about the house's occupants. Meanwhile, any one who attempts to leave Malpertuis begins to die...

With "Malpertuis," Kümal builds upon the dreamy atmosphere he created in "Daughters of Darkness." The film features many surreal elements. Several of the female characters, including both Jan's sister and his love interest, are played by the same actress. The city Jan finds himself in feels strangely empty at times. As a location, Malpertuis takes the idea of the towering gothic mansion and turns it into a labyrinth of tunnels, doors, and passageways. There are beggars in chains within cells under the stairs. Jan finds the severed paw of a homunculus in a mouse trap. The longer the film goes on, the clearer it becomes that this perpetually dusty and shadow-strewn castle is a metaphor for the twisting labyrinth of the human subconscious. The Malpertuis halls do not seem to follow any interior logic, the layout of the building changing every time someone turns around. The walls and rooms become increasingly stranger as the story progresses. The last act of the film – wholly excised from the "Legend of Doom House" cut – takes the idea that Jan is increasingly trapped in his own dreamland to its most inevitable conclusion. The result is a movie that is sometimes tricky to get ahold of yet, once the viewer surrenders to its phantasmagorical power, becomes quite arresting. 

Part of what makes "Malpertuis" a little trickier for me to get into than "Daughters of Darkness" is that the film has a surprisingly large cast. The titular home is filled with many unusual residents, most of whom fill some job or position within the structure of the castle. There's an eccentric taxidermist, a trio of dour sisters, a pair of comedic servants, so on and so forth. Jan himself, played by the very blonde and blue-eyed Mathieu Carrière, is never developed much beyond an innocent visitor to this strange land. All of this is quite intentional though. "Malpertuis" is a film about the subconscious in the Jungian tradition. Each of the characters correspond to a classical archetype. There's the trickster, the fool, the dying mentor, the virginal maiden, the seductress, and the young man who has not yet begun to grasp his own destiny. This idea is set up by the very first scene, which features someone reading a child "Alice in Wonderland," suggesting the film that follows is a fairy tale of sorts as well as a dive into a fantastical underworld. (Notably, a character named Alice also appears.) That the cast are extensions of ancient figureheads is the entire point, drawing direct parallels between many of its characters and the gods and villains of Greek mythology. In that light, Malpertuis becomes the Labyrinth of Minos with Jan as the naïve Alice exploring this malevolent wonderland. By the end, the names that the Greeks worshipped and whispered about have been absorbed by the collective unconscious, reduced to stories that are told to children and exists only within the winding corridors of our own mind. This makes "Malpertuis" a deeply post-modern work, showing how the myths of old have been superseded in the modern age by Freudian psychology and attempts to explain how our mind works and not merely populate it with archetypal faces. 

It's all quite fascinating to a pretentious nobody like myself, with an interest in classical mythology and Campbellian analysis. However, while watching "Malpertuis," I did find myself wondering if this was one of those inscrutable art films that somehow found their way onto various lists about the horror genre. The titular mansion is very spooky but, for its first hour, "Malpertuis" resembles more of an absurdist comedy than a horror movie. Watching a puffy, gasping Orson Welles light up when presented with a taxidermized rat, a bizarre burlesque show, or the squabbling servants of the home go about their duties is obviously meant to provoke laughter, not fear. As it winds closer to its point, "Malpertuis" does become a more haunting experience. There's a discovery of a gruesome dead body that wouldn't be out of place in a giallo. A grotesque, stuffed chimpanzee puts in a notable experience. Jan explores the foggy tomb of his uncle. By the final act, the myriad of residents are informed more by their relationship to figures from Greek mythology. A chained man is gorily torn open by an eagle, recreating the story of Prometheus. When confronted by a Christian cross, one of the mansion's residents expels a plume of fire from his mouth like a dragon, rejecting the symbol of modern religion. By the time the first of several reveals has come, it's quite obvious which classic monster of Greek myth is inhabiting this castle. "Malpertuis" doesn't run entirely on dream logic but it is a nightmare, growing more menacing the deeper it grows to the primordial stories it invokes.  

I'm not surprised that a deliberately surreal film with such blatantly intellectual goals was cut up and re-edited into a tawdry monster movie by American distributors only interested in making a quick buck. Exploitation producers knew how to sell the lesbian vampire melodrama of "Daughters of Darkness" but this was a harder egg to crack. "Malpertuis" was a movie always destined more for the arthouse than the grindhouse. Perhaps the film's reception in the seventies is why Kümel would largely step away from genre filmmaking afterwards, with the rest of his work receiving limited releases in the west. It's a weird, fascinating film though in direct conversation with modern psychological woes and how it relates to the old stories. The film currently can't be found on any streaming service, making it primed for rediscovery via an extras packed Blu-ray re-release from Arrow or Criterion or some label like that. It's a harder film to relate to than "Daughters of Darkness" – which I really need to get around to writing about some day – but a rewarding one that has a lot to say and grows stranger and more menacing as it goes along. A good note to end my world tour on, I think. [8/10]

50 States of Fright: Grey Cloud Island (Minnesota)

Quibi might have possibly been the all-time worst idea for a streaming service but we did get "50 States of Fright," a pretty cool horror anthology series, out of it. "Grey Cloud Island," Minnesota's installment, comes to us from "Intruders" director Adam Schindler. It concerns a group of college freshmen undergoing a fraternity initiation. They are left on Grey Cloud Island, supposedly the most haunted stretch of land in the state, and told to walk back home on foot. As they navigate the woods, they come upon a strange home. Inside, a young woman has been chained up in an iron mask, seemingly a sacrifice for a Neo-Pagan Norse cult of some sort. The boys decide to rescue the girl and soon find themselves pursued by the modern day vikings, who are determined to reclaim their prisoner and more than willing to use deadly force to do it.

"Grey Cloud Island" is essentially a 23 minute slasher film and quite a well executed one too. The frat boys are developed enough, through their dialogue interactions and body language, and to get us invested before the bodies start to fall. By thrusting right into this situation, we have as much information as the characters do, meaning the viewer is similarly dragged along on this night from hell too. The twists and turns along the way aren't too hard to predict. The true nature of a seemingly benign old woman the boys seek shelter with is given away by the distinctive symbol on her necklace. The final reveal concerning the girl in the mask is heavily foreshadowed via a painting glimpsed on a wall in one scene. 

What genuinely makes "Grey Cloud Island" a solid half-hour is the creative variations on the formula it displays and the robust direction from Schindler. Ditching the stereotypical slasher killer for a whole pack of modern day vikings, seemingly led by valkyrie-like women, is a clever idea. Especially since the production designers clearly did their work, evident in the elaborate knot patterns seen on the cultist or one of them using some Glima. The violence is surprisingly intense and creative. A knife pinning a hand to a wall or a throwing axe to the forehead are well delivered shocks, followed by some nicely splattering gore effects. When a monster appears on-screen, it has a refreshingly freaky design. In other words, "Grey Cloud Island" is exactly the kind of meat-and-potatoes comfort horror I seek from anthology shows. By the way, Grey Cloud Island is a real place and a few of the associated legends are mentioned here. However, the idea of an early Nordic colonization of the area and a bottomless pit are sourced from other Minnesotan myths. [7/10]

Missing in the Mansion (2012)

At this point, it is not an overstatement to say that the Disney corporation is a force for evil. However, at the same time, Disney's cultural legacy is impossible to ignore. The company has built its business around getting its hooks in consumers during their childhood, who forever associate the brand with the nostalgic warm-and-fuzzies. Such a model inevitably invites subversion. In 2013, a tiny indie film would make a splash by covertly filming itself within Disney World. The hype around "Escape from Tomorrow" faded once people got a look at the movie. It also wasn't the first time someone tried such an experiment. A year before, YouTubers Jeremiah and Josh Daws made a short found footage horror film inside the actual Haunted Mansion at Disneyland entitled "Missing in the Mansion." However you feel about Disney as an entity, that's such a great gimmick for a found footage flick that I had to check it out. 

"Missing in the Mansion" has the classic "Blair Witch" framing device, claiming to be unaltered footage discovered on the ride. We see Kevin – who dreams of working as a Disney Imagineer – documenting his brother Scott's day in the park with his girlfriend, Jess. He's there to record the proposal but keeps recording afterwards. Soon, the trio arrives at the Haunted Mansion. They discuss rumors that the attraction is literally haunted, which disturbs Jess. They talk her into joining them on the ride anyway... And that's when something goes very wrong.

Disney is so insistent on maintaining the image of their theme parks as "the happiest place on Earth," that they won't allow emergency vehicles on the lot. The idea that bad things are still going to happen at a place with such a squeaky-clean image is a fruitful one. The footage begins with a shot of Kevin attempting to record a video resume for Disney but feeling like a failure before he starts. That sets up the idea early on that sadder, more desperate emotions float under the park's veneer of giddiness. Similarly, for every happy moment the camera catches, like Jess' gleeful acceptance of Scott's proposal, there's another less joyful interaction – such as the couple arguing – that is recorded. That pairs well with the set-up of the short, that people often dump the ashes of human beings at Disney attractions, seemingly inviting a haunting. In other words, no matter how hard you try and block out the sad, frustrating, dark realities of the world, they always find a way in. 

Being filmed in the actual park adds a level of credibility to "Missing in the Mansion" that a lot of found footage flicks lack. The early scenes, of the trio running around the park and talking, feel totally realistic. If you didn't know better, it would be very easy to be tricked into thinking this was genuine footage. Once we get into the Mansion, when the lights go down, there is an occasional sense of eeriness here too. Especially once the passengers look around and realize they are totally alone in their Doom Buggies. The "safe" thrills of the PG rated ride don't seem so safe when you're the only one there, do they? Sadly, "Missing in the Mansion" lacks the scares necessary to truly make its premise work. The final minutes feel quite hokey and the actual ghosts appearing on-screen are not convincing. At this point, you realize "Missing in the Mansion" was made by actual Disney Adults and not some plucky filmmakers primarily looking to subvert the wholesome image of Uncle Walt's institution. Still, it's a neat idea for a short film and, at only eleven minutes long, more than worth your time. Maybe "Escape from Tomorrow" would've been better received if it was only a short, instead of a feature film. [6/10]