Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, 2024). Having watched it closely, discussed it with my household’s official expert on all things horror, and even done a little outside reading, I’m still not sure the plot of Cuckoo makes a lick of sense. That doesn’t really bother me, though, because I had a blast watching Hunter Schafer react to every new wacko development in front of her with incredulous exasperation that no one else is cognizant of how much basic human behavior is being cast aside in the Alpine resort community where the film is set. Schafer plays Gretchen, a moody teenager who’s recently switched which parent she’s living with; she’s now with her mildly distant dad (Martin Csokas), his new, younger wife (Jessica Henwick), and their younger, nonverbal daughter (Mila Lieu). Already petulant about the relocation, Gretchen is immediately suspicious of the manager of the resort space, Herr König (Dan Stevens), who exudes aroused menace as he intones cryptic statements in a vee-haff-waze-of-makeeng-you-tock accent. Director Tilman Singer stages the disturbing mayhem with spunky energy and a sharp eye. The briskness of his approach maybe muddles some of the themes around female bodily autonomy (that, sadly, couldn’t be more pertinent right now), but it also allows the film to zoom over its plot holes.

The Stuff (Larry Cohen, 1985). This satiric horror film is a bleakly comic diatribe against the Reagan administration’s abdication of regulatory responsibilities in the service of letting corporations profit freely with no concern for public well-being. It’s also a movie about murderous yogurt. The mix of caustic humor and B-movie rambunctiousness might make The Stuff the quintessential Larry Cohen feature. The film has a Corman-style energy that could play as amateurish if it wasn’t clear that the raggedy edges were all part of joke. Who else was going to give character actor heavies Danny Aiello and Paul Sorvino a chance to go goofy like this. That’s especially true for Sorvino, who taps into Strangelove-level actorly abandon as military man Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears. The man joy in the film is in watching Cohen regular Michael Moriarty put give every line he delivers a new weirdly different spin. Like A Face in the Crowd a few decades earlier, The Stuff is flawed because it’s not cynical enough. After the threat to public health is made public, the masses destroy all existing tuns of the product. The last few years have decisively proved that wouldn’t happen.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (F.W. Murnau, 1922). This unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula still feels like it set the blueprint from practically every horror film that followed. More than a century later, the film remains deeply unnerving whenever director F.W. Murnau can give full attention to the blood-craving fiend Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Working with cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, Murnau crafts amazing imagery out of shadows and gloom. Schreck give a performance of intense physical control; his stillness and glacial movements are scarier that the jolts that dictate the rhythms of modern horror movies. Made in Germany when World War II was still a recent event, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror gives a properly doom-laden weight to ships that arrive in port with most of the crew dead or the sight of coffins being carried down a town’s main thoroughfare. I should note that I saw the film with an original score (and foley effects) performed live by the Denver musical collective Quarkestra, and it was absolutely splendid.