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CUCKOO

"The Word for Today Is Creepy"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)
Entertainment Quality:
NoneLightModerateHeavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

CUCKOO is a bizarre horror movie. A 17-year-old American girl, Gretchen, is stuck in a creepy German mountain resort with her father, his Asian wife and their younger daughter, Alma, who’s mute and seems slightly autistic. Gretchen and Alma are menaced by a strange woman wandering the resort. The woman somehow might be tied in some way to the resort’s unctuous, unsettling German owner, who’s building a new resort with Gretchen’s father.

CUCKOO has some nicely written character developments. For example, Gretchen gets help from a local police detective, but the detective keeps some secrets from her. However, the plot is strange and ends in a violent showdown that doesn’t explain much. The main villain in CUCKOO turns out to be an insane environmentalist who doesn’t care about protecting humans. So, CUCKOO exposes the dark side of environmentalism. However, it has some strong foul language. Also, the young heroine, Gretchen, has an affair with another young woman. They try to run away together, but the strange woman causes them to have a car accident. Gretchen is seriously injured, and the young woman dies.

Content:

(B, C, HoHo, LL, VVV, SS, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Light moral, redemptive worldview in that the 17-year-old heroine and a police detective are trying to stop an insane environmentalist who cares more about protecting and promoting dangerous wildlife that he does about protecting humans and the heroine tries to save her younger step sister, but the heroine also has a lesbian kissing affair with a young woman she’s met, but who dies soon after they meet;

Foul Language:
14 obscenities (including eight “f” words), one strong Jesus profanity, and two women vomit in at least two scenes (it appears that they are pregnant, according to some dialogue later);

Violence:
Some brief extreme violence with some blood and scary intense violence includes lengthy gunfight between the villain, villain’s henchmen and a man who helps the movie’s teenager heroine, people are attacked, two bodies with pools of blood beside them, spooky woman with opaque glasses hat and coat startles people and seems to be talking and attacking people for some reason, spooky woman appears in middle of road and causes a car to go tumbling and leaving one young woman seriously injured and another young woman bloodied and dead, character runs into glass door and gets gash on her forehead, and a doctor staples the wound, a character is stabbed in the throat with some gushing blood occurring, and talk about the cuckoo bird which eaves its eggs in other nests and then comes back to take its progeny;

Sex:
Two older teenage girls kiss passionately before the car they’re using to escape crashes, killing one of the teenagers and seriously injuring the other, the movie’s main character, who’s taken to a the hospital, and it’s implied that a woman and her boyfriend may have sex;

Nudity:
No nudity, but woman opens her bath towel to entice her boyfriend, but nothing shown to viewers because she has her back to the camera;

Alcohol Use:
No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Some smoking and a comment about a teenager being high on drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Deceit, villain has a condescending attitude toward people, especially the young 17-year-old heroine, and characters keep secrets.

More Detail:

CUCKOO is a bizarre horror movie. A 17-year-old American girl, Gretchen, is stuck in a creepy German mountain resort with her father, his Asian wife and their younger daughter, Alma, who’s mute and seems slightly autistic. Gretchen and Alma are menaced by a strange woman wandering the resort. The woman somehow might be tied in some way to the resort’s unctuous, unsettling German owner, who’s building a new resort with Gretchen’s father.

CUCKOO has some nicely written character developments. For example, Gretchen gets help from a local police detective, but the detective has some secrets he keeps from her. However, the plot is strange and ends in a violent showdown that doesn’t explain much. The main villain in CUCKOO turns out to be an insane environmentalist who doesn’t care about protecting humans. So, CUCKOO exposes the dark side of environmentalism. However, there’s some strong foul language. Also, the young heroine, Gretchen, has an affair with a young woman. They try to run away together, but the strange woman causes them to have a car accident. Gretchen is seriously injured, and the young woman dies.

CUCKOO never implies that its teenage heroine will give up her lesbian inclinations. That and the movie’s bizarre violence and brief foul language make it unacceptable. The movie’s strange creepy qualities don’t warrant a look by avid moviegoers, much less media-wise viewers.



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