Nights of Horror: Cuckoo (2024)

Cuckoo (USA, 2024)

I’ve always had a “thing” for beautiful men doing exactly as they’re told, and ever since I saw The Guest (2014), that “thing” has extended to Dan Stevens. It was the first thing I ever saw him in, and I later learned that he isn’t that jacked all the time, and he’s mostly just an adorable, multilingual weirdo who takes on interesting projects. Sweeten the pot for me MORE, why don’t ya? I’ve only seen the first couple episodes of Downton Abbey, and he wasn’t in them. I should keep going, because I find high protocol butler service deeply interesting, but who has the time?

When Cuckoo was announced, I saw Dan Stevens chirping in with his chipper and clipped German accent, and something chasing sweet baby angel Hunter Schafer down a dark road, and a dog who’s very suspicious about those woods, a hospital, a spa, something, whatever, I was in.

The word “cuckold” is derived from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its habit of laying its eggs in other birds’ nests. The association is common in European iconography and literature going back to medieval times.

If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of parasitic animal relationships, as most children of the 90s did (thank you Wildlife Fact File and Zoobooks), you might remember a very fun fact about the cuckoo. A cuckoo will lay its egg in the nest of another bird, and when that baby hatches, it will push the other babies out of the nest to certain death, but the instinct of the other parents is to care for the baby that’s here. They end up losing their offspring and raising another animal entirely. It’s the same metaphor used in Village of the Damned, which was based on The Midwich Cuckoos.

And that’s exactly what’s happening here!

American-born Gretchen has to go live with her architect father in Europe after the death of her mother. He is in the process of expanding a frou-frou health resort in the Alps, owned and operated by wealthy eccentric Herr König, played by Dan Stevens. Very early on, Gretchen gets the sense that this health resort, and the man who runs it, are more than they seem.

After we witness several people experiencing time loops and sustaining head injuries, we learn that they’re all being caused by a species of humanoid bird women, who have the ability to mind control and stun their host by emitting a very special kind of whistle-song. These women then reach inside themselves and pull out that thicc gushy gush that only comes (in human women) at that most horniest time of the month, 9-14 days after the start of the menstrual cycle if you’re normal. This thicc gushy gush contains an egg, which they then insert into the vagina of the stunned woman, impregnating her with a not-quite-human-not-quite-bird baby. And since they’re already fabulously wealthy and taking the waters at fancy pants health resort and doing everything that Herr Koenig recommends (I get it, it’s Dan Stevens, even if I don’t believe a goddamn word, I’m like “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.”), they’re like “Yay, I was totally trying to get pregnant, this is great” and then the baby is born and claimed by the bird-mother, who emerges from the woods, shrieking and as manic as she is lusty.

Gretchen, being a young Gen Z lesbian who shan’t be separated from her precious headphones, survives several attempted attacks before we realize what is happening, and by the time that we do, Dan Stevens is holding a flute, like “Listen. I’m a conservationist,” and *I* was in the audience like “Yeah okay, seems legit.”

But of course some folks don’t WANT to be the host to a horrifying bird baby and potentially be ripped to shreds (TO SHREDS YOU SAY) by its deadbeat mother who all she wants to do is kill your man, knock you up, and run back off into the woods like Shia LeBoeuf until you lay an egg and she’s like your sleeping grandpa when you slide the remote out off the arm of the chair, choking on a snore and blurting out “I was watching that!”

Listen, in a perfect world Herr König would protect you from the horrifying bird-women. You’d have to keep hosting their eggs, of course, til you stopped producing viable offspring and he inevitably put a bullet between your eyes, but until then, you’d get to live in a gorgeous in-ground pool bedroom and eat delicious German snacks and have Dan Stevens and his scientist friends come check on you several times a day and ask you how you’re feeling, not listen to you say how weird this all is, and remark on how great it is that you’re feeling so great. Isn’t that great? I love this bonkers-ass resort. I don’t know if I ever wanna leave. See this is another one of those situations where I’m like, not mad at it and actually kind of into it. Daily validation from Dan Stevens telling me how pretty and healthy I am, giving me injections and then letting strange owl women fist me? Sweeten the pot for me MORE, why don’t ya?

Cuckoo arrived in theatres on Aug 9, so it’s probably still in theatres.