A 2024 queer pulp horror that tried to have its cake and eat it too moves in on Tim Allen and disappointing sharks on streaming

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that horror is having a moment right now, but it would be more accurate to say that horror has been having a moment for the last couple of years. Indeed, with the emergence of bodies like A24 and Neon, as well as internet sketch comedians entering the feature filmmaking space, gorehounds and thinkers alike have maintained a fulfilling horror diet for some time now.

The transgressive nature of the genre tends to pave the way for delightfully weird proceedings, and Cuckoo fits that bill pretty firmly. Narratively speaking, Tilman Singer’s sort-of-monster movie had the world in the palm of its hand, and subsequently suffered a bit from what might have been decision overload. Luckily, the rawness of its story is the perfect cult status springboard, and its recent streaming success may be step one on that journey.

Per FlixPatrol, Cuckoo has debuted as the fourth most-watched film on the United States’ Hulu film charts at the time of writing (with a cheeky fifth place overall finish to boot). Competing against it are the likes of an eighth-place Christmas with the Kranks — the Tim Allen-led Christmas movie that’s actually a horror movie and has enjoyed an enduring cult status of its own — and No Way Up, one of the latest knockoffs of a knockoff of a knockoff of Jaws, and certainly not one of the greatest.

Cuckoo stars Hunter Schafer in her first leading film role as Gretchen, an American teenager who just lost her mother and is subsequently sent to live in the Bavarian Alps with her dad, stepmother, and half-sister Alma. Between her grief, lack of familiarity with her surroundings and other people, and her desk job that comes with some very strange rules, Gretchen is having a pretty miserable time. Things get far worse, however, when she gets wrapped up in a conspiracy involving her family, her boss, and an unseen monster with perverted intentions.

Cuckoo is a supremely curious case in the sense that it entertains a number of thematic and tonal personalities without really full-sending any of them. Throughout its runtime, it wears many different combinations of dread, humor, familial estrangement, uncanny isolation, and a large dollop of queerness. But Cuckoo never quite decides on a combination to well and truly dig into, instead preferring that you taste all of its potential identities.

Indeed, it’s a nest of cinematic odd ducks all coming of age together under the watchful eye of a B-movie sheen, seemingly frightened that if it chooses a favorite tone or theme, the rest will be rendered emotionally extinct. Some may chalk this up as indecisive storytelling that tries to be everything and is therefore nothing, and that’s not a completely unfair characterization.

Nevertheless, when you consider the literal events and revelations of the film in the context of the above description, it’s just as easy to conclude that Singer was operating with far more intention than a first glance may suggest.

The film first premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival in February, and took its sweet time making it to theaters, which it eventually did in August. It landed on Hulu Dec. 17.