Review of the thriller “The Others: Curse of the Cuckoo” Mar Targarons

The thriller “The Others: The Curse of the Cuckoo” (El Cuco) by Mar Targarona has been released. There is no talk of any international friendship in the film of the Spanish-German production – rather, its complete opposite. Tells Julia Shagelman.

Swapping houses with complete strangers is something people never do in real life, but ironically, this isn’t the first time such a reckless act has inspired filmmakers. For example, this is exactly the premise of Nancy Meyers’s sweetest Christmas rom-com “Exchange Holiday” (2006). By switching homes for the holidays, his heroines find love and, more importantly, gain faith in themselves. Alas, the characters in “Cuckoo” (as Mar Targarona’s film is called in the original) are much less fortunate: their exchange vacation turns into a real nightmare, after which even just renting an apartment from private owners may seem like a dangerous idea. And they completely lose themselves, as is warned by the prelude to the picture from the horror classic H. P. Lovecraft, which, in general, describes the entire subsequent plot in one sentence.

Anna (Belen Cuesta) lives in Barcelona and works in a maternity hospital. She herself will soon become a mother, but the happy anticipation is overshadowed by tension in her relationship with her husband Mark (Jorge Suquet). He stays late at work, doesn’t help at all around the house, forcing his wife to do housework “on the second shift,” in the evenings, instead of reading books about parenthood, he plays computer games and even forgets about the dates on which they agreed to take vacation before the birth of the child. However, Anna had already posted a photo of their apartment on a site where people exchange housing, and received a response from a nice elderly couple from the Black Forest, to whom satisfied tourists had already left many positive reviews.

After some hesitation, Mark agrees to the trip, and the couple set off for Germany, leaving their dog in the care of their neighbor Lucas (David Selvas). When they meet in person, however, Hans (Rainer Reiners) and Olga (Hildegard Schroedter) turn out to be somewhat strange, especially the husband. He unceremoniously feels Mark’s muscles and, out of the blue, gives him his expensive smartwatch, while his wife, having asked Anna a couple of questions about pregnancy, is mostly silent and smiling. Hans voices the basic rules for exchanging houses: treat other people’s property with respect; give yourself time to get used to the new place. There is also a third rule, but it will not be heard at the first meeting.

However, German pensioners themselves, unlike their young guests, do not comply with these conditions at all. While Anna and Mark walk in admiration through their modern house, stuffed with electronics and surveillance systems, they themselves cause complete destruction in the Barcelona apartment, and even mutter some kind of conspiracies, arousing Lucas’s suspicions. At this time, their adult and completely naked daughter (Chacha Juan), about whom no one warned the Spanish guests, is discovered in the pool of their house, and Mark has an accident in the owner’s car, after which he begins to behave as if he had been replaced. And if Anna is surprised by this development of events, the audience is not so much.

The authors of The Cuckoo’s Curse lay their cards on the table rather quickly. The very motif of the cuckoo throwing its rightful inhabitants out of the nest is repeated often and persistently: Anna watches a program about the habits of these birds just before leaving for Germany, then the story about them will be heard again in a Black Forest museum filled with cuckoo clocks, where she and Mark visit . Also, the audience’s attention is intensely drawn to numerous mirrors and reflections, and in one of the most disturbing scenes of the film, masks will also appear, literally replacing the characters’ own faces.

At the same time, the frightening atmosphere of Mar Targaron is still quite skillfully built up, and Belen Cuesta does an excellent job with the role of a typical horror heroine, confused and not understanding what kind of game is going on around her. Anna’s pregnancy further raises the stakes – it’s hard not to sympathize with her, even if all the turns in the film are rather schematic and predictable, and it’s better not to think about the internal logic of what’s happening at all. This predictability is more than redeemed by the ending, when the authors throw away all restraining factors and go all out. If “Curse of the Cuckoo” suddenly gets a sequel, it has every chance of being much worse.