Cuckoo (2024 Melbourne International Film Festival)  ★★½

CUCKOO is right.

German/US horror film Cuckoo is tense, quirky and interesting for its first half.

Then it starts trying to explain the plot and you realise it’s going to fall very short of a satisfying story.

Hunter Schafer, best known for the television series Euphoria, plays 17-year-old Gretchen who reluctantly lives with her father, step mother and her younger daughter.

The family have arrived in the Bavarian Alps region of Germany where her father (Martin Csokas) is designing the new section of a tourist resort.

The resort is owned by the eccentric Mr Konig, played with typical flair by Andrew Stevens.

Soon after their arrival, strange things begin to happen, particularly to the two daughters.

Gretchen accepts an offer from Herr Konig of a job at the existing resort’s reception where she encounters multiple female guests vomiting.

Meanwhile, Alma starts experiencing seizures triggered by a mysterious shrieking noise.

In the film’s best sequence Gretchen has a terrifying encounter with a hooded woman while cycling home one night.

Gretchen meets a hotel guest, whom she forms a relationship with, and detective who claims he is investigating a murder linked to the hooded woman. Meanwhile, Herr Konig’s behaviour is becoming increasingly bizarre and his influence on the other members of Gretchen’s family stronger.

It all reminded me a little of Twin Peaks but perhaps they should have also left things unexplained.

Watched at the cinema.