Style in cinema is great, but it is only great if it has a strong angle on story, as Tilman Singer’s 2024 horror film Cuckoo unfortunately demonstrates. This German/American co-production brings Hollywood money and talent to a decidedly European aesthetic, but in telling a story in such a distant and oblique manner it struggles to properly tell it at all.

Bear with me: I suspect the problem is not that Singer struggles to tell a story, but that he struggles to tell this story. The film focuses on Gretchen (Hunter Shafer), a grieving teen who goes to live with her father and step-family following the death of her mother. They have just moved to the German Alps, where they are helping an oily-toned entrepreneur (Dan Stevens) rebuild his ageing mountain resort. Unexplained phenomena occur, Gretchen gets curious, and her investigation reveals the terrible sort of secret typical of horror stories.

The story of Cuckoo is straight-edge unadulterated B-grade pulp. It is the kind of thing representative of Sam Raimi, or pre-superhero James Gunn, and it invites a similarly self-conscious and bold sort of direction. Instead Singer cloaks it, in suffocating fashion, in a keenly elegant and quiet fashion. Its visual texture is self-consciously artful, and the manner in which the narrative unfolds is weirdly spaced out by ellipsis and deliberately withheld information.

Singer’s style here is properly superb, and his story has enormous potential. Thrown together, for this viewer at least, and they simply do not gel together. I have no doubt that for other moviegoers the combination will work brilliantly: if Cuckoo develops a cult following over the next few years, I would not be surprised. Simon Waskow’s musical score is particularly effective.

Hunter Shafer is excellent as Gretchen, and represents yet another top-notch actor to emerge from HBO’s Euphoria. She receives strong support from Stevens, as well as co-stars Márton Csókás, Jennifer Henwick, and Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey. Of particular note are Kalin Morrow as a mysterious hooded woman, in a performance more effective than might first appear, and Jan Bluthardt, an obsessive police detective who seems to have walked out of every ‘nordic noir’ production ever conceived.

There is one major caveat to make, which is the casting of the able-bodied Mila Lieu as Alma, Gretchen’s non-verbal half-sister. It is a role that should have gone to a non-verbal performer, and – no disrespect to Leiu, who is very good – not to someone who can speak. It tarnishes an otherwise superb cast. It is FictionMachine policy to note anti-disability casting when it happens, and to condemn it appropriately.

The story of Cuckoo is good. The production of Cuckoo is good. The two struggle to meet at the middle, making this a flawed but undeniably interesting film. I strongly suspect that additional viewings will be more enjoyable, once the viewer can anticipate its various oddities and wrinkles.