What is the work?[]
Cuckoo is a 2024 science fiction horror film directed by German filmmaker Tilman Singer and starring Hunter Schafer as Gretchen. After the death of her mother, Gretchen learns that her father Luis is moving the family to the Bavarian Alps so they could assist in opening a hotel. She already has enough hellish things happening beside her mother's death such as dealing with how weird her half-sister Alma is. When they arrive to the hotel, strange things start to happen with several women vomiting and time loops seemingly happen.
Who is he? What has he done?[]
Herr König is a German man who invites Gretchen and her family to the Bavarian Alps in order to assist in making a hotel. However, beneath his friendly demeanor, König is a psychopathic mad scientist who had somehow discovered a race of humanoid beings he nicknames Cuckoos after the birds that notoriously do not take care of their own. With the resort, he lures people into a room of the hotel called the "love nest" where the Cuckoo would use their bizarre call to disorient the husband and then impregnate the female by inserting their slimy eggs into their bodies. This was in fact how Alma was born, and König wanted to reunite her with the hooded woman because it would somehow strengthen the species.
Not anticipating that Gretchen would be with them, König has her work at the front desk as a distraction while he prioritizes on her half-sister Alma who is the daughter of a hooded woman that antagonizes Gretchen under the belief she was a threat. During that time, he would use a flute to control the Cuckoos. The hooded woman would be responsible for at least one murder that detective Henry is investigating.
After the hooded woman tries to inseminate Gretchen's co-worker Trixie, König takes Alma saying that she developed a seizure. He promises to take her to the nearest train station but that is a blatant lie. Instead, he reveals the true nature of Alma and sprays Gretchen with pheromones to attract a teenage Cuckoo to her. However just before the creature was able to insert her eggs into her, König takes a pillow and attempts to smother Gretchen to death. Thankfully, Henry arrives and shoots the mad scientist. He reveals that his wife was killed by a Cuckoo when she choked on her own vomit during one of the Cuckoo's disorienting calls.
However, Henry proves to be a liability because he plans on killing Alma along with all the other Cuckoos in his crazed plan of ending the experiment. The ritual is thwarted, but König kills his assistant Dr. Bonomo and gets in a shootout with Henry. In her scuffle with the hooded woman, Gretchen kills her and cuts her wig off. As Alma and Gretchen escape, Alma uses her call to disorient them both giving the two enough time to escape.
König and Henry then shoot each other.
Freudian Excuse? Mitigating factors?[]
So... here is where the tricky stuff comes in: König likes to paint himself as a preservationist who is truly fascinated by the humanlike Cuckoos so much so, he devises the plan to lure couples to the hotel and ensure that the woman gets inseminated by the Cuckoo. And he plans on having Alma reunite with the hooded woman. But... can you really say that he genuinely cares for the creatures? When Gretchen manages to kill the main Cuckoo and shows off the wig for further proof, he doesn't have much reaction to it. When he captures Gretchen and sprays her with pheromones to make the adolescent Cuckoo inseminate Gretchen, that is him just flaunting his power over them. Or when Alma chooses to go with Gretchen. König is apprehensive on it. Not to mention he also conducts experiments on the Cuckoos. All of this seems to suggest that he views the Cuckoos as magnificent creatures, yes, but something that he could control as he saw fit.
Heinous standard[]
He sets up a disgusting system of impregnating human women with Cuckoos and had been in operation for a while. The secondary antagonist, the hooded woman, attempts to kill Gretchen on several occasions and assaults Trixie, but for the most part, she is depicted as a wild animal who pales in heinousness to König.