Cuckoo Plot Summary
The story centers on 17-year-old Gretchen. She reluctantly leaves her American home to live with her father, who has just moved into a resort in the German Alps with his new family.
Arriving at their future residence, they are greeted by the weird Mr. König, her father’s boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen’s half-sister Alma, who also happens to be mute.
There’s definitely something up with this seemingly paradisaic vacation spot, and Gretchen sets out to investigate what’s really going on here. As she does, she finds herself plagued with visions and strange noises, culminating in some shocking revelations.
Why is Gretchen unhappy?
To understand Gretchen’s frame of mind – and the themes around family and belonging – it’s worth exploring Gretchen’s family background. Her mother died and she’s been reluctantly forced to go and stay with her father, who has now remarried and has a child of his own, Alma.
Early on Gretchen doesn’t see Alma as her own sister and sees herself as an outsider in this family. She struggles to find a place to belong and eventually ends up working for König at the front-desk of his hotel.
However, she begins experiencing strange hallucinations, is chased on her bike by a weird figure and ends up cutting her head open too, needing stitches as a result.
What is König’s resort?
There’s a slight red herring here where you’re led to believe Gretchen could be suffering from a head injury. She’s not only involved in a car accident but her incident with the hotel, where she smashes her face against the glass, causes her to be wrapped in a bandage for the rest of the movie.
However, the reality is far weirder. It turns out König is a “preservationist” and the resort hides a dark secret. He’s been head of a breeding program that’s been going on for generations. Their idea is to create a species of superpowered female humans with the reproductive and parasitic behaviour of cuckoos.
Why is König trying to do this?
Yeah, we’re never given an explanation to this. The fact that cuckoos are largely solitary birds, seems to play into the final act of the movie where Alma (we’ll get to her in a second) is “saved” by Gretchen by embracing her as a sister properly and breaking this spell. But this is just one of many questions we never get an answer to!
How is König stopped?
When it becomes clear that König is going to use Alma as her next test subject, Gretchen and Henry (the police officer friend/enemy she teams up) to try and stop him.
It turns out that those involved in this breeding program use the hotel as a lure to bring in couples and ensnare them with auditory-based mind control. This is evidenced by Konig using his recorder, where he controls different women throughout the movie.
As for the end-result, König then has those involved with this big conspiracy impregnate the women with cuckoo humanoids, raised by the couples, which is not dissimilar to the behaviour of actual cuckoos, who lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and let their young be reared by these birds.
Why Alma?
Alma immediately catches König’s attention early on in the movie and it becomes clear in the second half of the film. Alma is actually one of these cuckoo humanoids, having been unknowingly conceived by her parents at the resort years back.
The woman whom Gretchen manages to stop in her room after being captured is Alma’s biological mother. This means that Alma and Gretchen have more in common than we first thought, and this helps them both to bond by the time the final credits roll.
What of the themes?
Singer himself has come out recently and admitted the ending is left up to interpretation. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, he explained that Cuckoo could be read as an allegory for reproductive health or sisterhood, but he didn’t set out to make any concrete points. And yeah, that definitely seems that way while watching!
Personally, the film seems to be sending a message about family and how deep those bonds go. Sometimes blood is thicker than water but in the case of Cuckoo I guess cuckoo-humanoid blood is thicker than that?