Tilman Singer on Crafting CUCKOO and its Dark Origins

Hunter Schafer and Kalin Morrow in CUCKOO | Credit: Felix Dickinson, Photo Courtesy of NEON

By Shannon McGrew

In CUCKOO, 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) 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 Mr. König (Dan Stevens), her father's boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen's mute half-sister Alma. Something doesn't seem right in this tranquil vacation paradise. Gretchen is plagued by strange noises and bloody visions until she discovers a shocking secret that also concerns her own family.

For the release of CUCKOO, Creepy Kingdom's Shannon McGrew spoke with German writer/director Tilman Singer. During their chat, they discussed everything from Singer's inspiration for the film to how his love of specific visual elements helped enhance the film's tone and horror elements.

Hello Tilman! It's such a pleasure to speak with you. I was such a fan of Luz, and CUCKOO exceeded all my expectations. What was the genesis behind the story?

Tilman Singer: The genesis was a certain mood I was in then. I wasn't in a good place finishing up the movie I had done before, and I thought nobody would ever watch that movie. I was so naive, and I didn't know about genre film festivals and all that stuff. I was depressed and got panic attacks almost every day from the immense pressure. Many people have that; I hear that from many filmmakers.

I was quite anxious at the time and watched a documentary about the cuckoo bird and how it breeds. What it does is put its eggs into the nests of other bird species and then let them raise their offspring. I knew this already as I'm German, and I feel like every German child learns it at some point. We have children's songs about the cuckoo and we have the cuckoo clock, it's kind of our bird [Laughs]. So, I was watching the little host parents, how they have a chick that's not theirs in the nest, and they keep feeding it and don't abandon the nest, but all their chicks have died by this point because they get thrown out of the nest. It's quite gruesome, but there was beauty and hopefulness in the parents, sort of in a weird way, being ignorant and keeping on feeding that chick. I couldn't let go of it, and it came back to me all the time. It was putting me in a melancholic mood, but there was some beauty in it, as well as some deep fear and horror. At some point, I was thinking all right, how does this go with humans? What do I do with it? Then voila! You get CUCKOO.

Dan Stevens on the set of CUCKOO | Credit Felix Dickinson, Photo Courtesy of NEON

I love the differing locations, as they each had their own personality. When it came to finding the hotel, the Lover's Nest, the family home, etc, what were the important factors that you were looking for in the locations to help further the story?

Tilman Singer: I love shooting on location, but I try to avoid shooting on a soundstage. Everything you see in the movie was shot on location. We used a warehouse to build the interior of the Lover's Nest, so that was a studio, but everything else was on location. It's a really interesting question, and I don't know if I can put what I was after in concrete words. It's totally intuitive. You don't know which things connect and can carry your story or make it really what it is. But intuitively, it's already in your head, and the location can bring it out.

I knew that I wanted a glass house for the family. I wanted a house made out of glass because [of that saying] when you live in a glass house, you don't throw stones, but you also have it a little bit like an aquarium, like a zoo scenario. Where you can be watched from the outside, but also where when you're in, you see the outside nature, which can be a very terrifying thing in our story. I wanted to contrast this beautiful mid-century architecture with rustic charm, so to speak. Centimeters of dust and nicotine and patina on the walls. A hotel from a bygone era that was never really renovated inside; a decision was made in the 60s, and it's still like that today. But then also having a really clinical, oppressive institution with carpet floors and fluorescent lights. I love, love fluorescent light. When Dan Stevens stepped in there, he looked around and said, ah, a Tilman Singer movie, institutional horror, and I was like, yep, that describes it pretty well! [Laughs]

Speaking of Dan Stevens, he and Hunter Schaefer played so well off of one another. Can you talk a bit about casting them for this film?

Tilman Singer: They both strongly connected to the story and their characters. I could feel it immediately. They both are incredible actors. With Hunter, it oozed out of her. Dan's approach was... it's not that he takes it lightly, but he's so daring and bold and really up for doing something weird.

CUCKOO is a rollercoaster of a film that will, I'm sure, elicit varying degrees of reaction from viewers. Is there anything you hope people will take away from it?

Tilman Singer: I hope that people connect to it. It's a thrill ride. It's an entertaining movie. I love a good, fun movie, but I think it's also emotionally rich and can be understood in quite a few ways, which I like. I hope people connect to it in that way. It's beautiful when you can watch a movie, and it means something special to you. I had a similar conversation with Hunter and what it meant to her. It wasn't necessarily what it exactly meant to me, but that's the great thing, that's the beautiful thing about art. It can be such a concrete thing on the screen or in the story, but there are many ways of understanding it and making it your story.

CUCKOO arrives in theaters nationwide on August 9th.