Going ‘Cuckoo’: Three dud movies

As someone who has spent a majority of his life writing, acting, rehearsing, and basically doing anything and everything I can to make it into the motion picture industry, I can’t bring myself to be cynical about movies, even while knowing there’s lots of cynicism to spread around.

While it’s easier now to make a movie than ever before (I can name at least two great movies made on iPhones), it’s still not necessarily a walk in the park to finish one. Every movie that gets made, from the worst of Neal Breen to the best of Francis Ford Coppola, every single finished film is a miracle… some larger than others.

But a triple feature that I saw in one day was stacked with such bad movies that I felt the twinge of cynicism building behind my exhausted eyes. In fact, I was unable to completely sit through the third movie of my makeshift trilogy.

In no way do I think we’re living in the nadir of the motion picture industry right now (that was probably the 1950s… and during COVID), I do sometimes think of how amazing it would have been to live through the New Hollywood/American New Wave era of the late ’60s through the early ’80s and how that would have informed my obsession with cinema.

Even though I don’t think this is the worst period of filmmaking in history, this triple header made me think about maybe, just maybe, not watching all movies.

I started with Trap, the new film by M. Night Shyamalan and starring a recently returned from hiatus Josh Hartnett. Shyamalan is hit and miss (I wasn’t in love with his most recent Knock at the Cabin, but think he probably gets a lifetime pass for The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable). But Trap is his worst outing since at least The Last Airbender. The concept of a serial killer and his tween daughter at a massive arena concert surrounded by cops is solid enough and should have been an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride.

Somehow, not only does Shyamalan fail to summon a single second of tension in the entire film, the characters all have ridiculous dialogue. The story becomes more and more ridiculous and the structure falls apart into a messy collage of tropes and cliche.

Actually, the only thing that really works in Trap is Hartnett, who seems to be having a great time playing against type and using his deep well of charisma to make a creepy serial killer compelling. This movie is so bad it’s exhausting and a little depressing.

I followed that up with a screening of Cuckoo, a new science fiction/thriller/mystery/absurdist comedy starring Hunter Schafer, who effortlessly carries every frame of the film, even as the plot becomes sillier and, eventually, nonsensical. I was hyped for this one because of its great trailer and my love for Schafer and her co-star Dan Stevens.

I found the first half of the film very compelling because director Tilman Singer uses some visually hypnotizing formal tricks that pull you through the absurdist horror of the plot and imagery, but once you actually find out what’s going on and why everyone is acting strangely, it’s so ridiculous that the horror and terror inherent in the film up to that point then becomes campy and loses all sense of fear and tension. I found myself laughing at the film instead of with it and that’s a shame. Cuckoo is absolute nonsense and could have been so much more.

Then I saw Borderlands — a movie that was plagued with so many behind-the-scenes issues that when reshoots started, director Eli Roth wasn’t invited back to actually direct them and was instead replaced by Deadpool director Tim Miller. I’m not a huge fan of Rotten Tomatoes as a source for people to decide on the quality of a movie, but the current score for Borderlands is 7% with an audience score of 50%, both of which seem a little high to me. This might actually be the worst video game movie of all time.

Cate Blanchett looks like she’s having fun, but Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, and Jamie Lee Curtis all seem pretty embarrassed. The special effects don’t look finished or even fully rendered, the script is dire, the dialogue grating, and the story is without excitement. I made it 41 minutes into this and then had to bounce and drink away my sorrows.

I know it’s incredibly unprofessional for me not to have finished a movie I’m reviewing. All I can say is that Borderlands took 41 minutes I could have spent doing something better, like crying myself to sleep or drinking various types of bleach and rating their differing levels of viscosity.

I don’t know what person these three movies are for, but it isn’t me or anyone else I’ve ever met. Walking out of a movie before it’s over in search of a stiff drink hurt my heart a little. Let’s do better next time.