koku directed by Tillman singer stars Hunter Schaefer and Dan Stevens after reluctantly moving to the German Alps with her father and his new family Gretchen discovers that their new town hides Sinister Secrets as she's plagued by strange noises and frightening visions of a woman pursuing her this is another one of those movies where I saw a total of one single trailer for based on that it was enough to keep me intrigued to check this out as I personally always enjoy seeing a new horror movie on the big screen regardless of their quality but what did I think of this after seeing it I'll start with performances firstly with Hunter Schaefer I thought she did a really good job in this insane to see the woman in her mid-20s and still be able to seamlessly pull off a really accurate portrayal of a teenager the way she acts as a teen feels very natural and realistic throughout the whole runtime and it helps when the screenplay also portrays her character to be this way along with this when she's put into the situations that present many of the horror movie elements she displays a great deal of Terror that feels realistic enough to keep you engaged and to keep you sympathetic with her character throughout the whole runtime which makes for a good argument for schaer to be a possible screen Queen in the making some aspects of her character did bug me however it's more down to the way she's written rather than her performance as she makes the Arrogant angsty side of her character to be as accurate as it could in way I suppose this elevates her character rather than bringing it down Dan Stevens is quite the riot in this role and you can tell throughout the whole movie he's having such a fun time with the material he's given his accent borders between being natural and over the top at times but for the type of character he is in this I thought it worked well presents a good balance of being charismatic and creepy allinone as it's clear to see from the early introduction of his character why people will be drawn to him but as the movie progresses he does show off an impressive range of being threatening and whenever he does appear on screen it's clear he wants to present himself as this great force and manages to steal the seed when reappears on screen I think I went into this thing with higher expectations than I should have in the end it didn't end up being something I didn't think it would be but I still felt somewhat empty by the time this movie wraps and surprisingly for a movie with only an hour and 40 in a runtime it surely felt a lot longer this thing suffers from a massive pacing issue which causes the overall product to be really sluggish and it takes ages for things to really get going the movie portrays itself to be so high concept perhaps even wanting to be part of the elevated horror crew but instead comes across as over stuffing itself with so many ideas that ultimately don't work I did appreciate the fact that it seemed to want to mesh together the genre of a Coming of Age teen drama with a horror movie but any development that could have been given in these drama elements end up being half more than anything I appreciated the movie being a little more out there but unfortunately It suffers from what a lot of these types of movies tend to be doing recently where the third Act of the movie is taken up by explaining absolutely everything that's happened up until that point which became really disappointing to see as this is a horror movie I have to talk about the Fear Factor in this one and I am sad to say that a good majority of this movie relies more on cheap jump scares that are very predictable more than actual chilling scares on top of that there's points showing the scares where the sound designer must have thought turning up the sound would be enough to suffice as there are so many parts during this scene where it becomes loud and obnoxious more than anything at the same time it was cool to see some tricks pulled in this movie as we have the occasional scares done by haves creeping and crawling in the background for you to notice and the atmosphere for a majority of the movie was done well here too featuring lots of lurking shadows and some zany creatures to keep the viewers somewhat interested I think the cinematography in this especially was one of the highlights I have to shout out the Director of Photography in this movie Paul fultz someone who so far at least from what I'm looking out seems to mainly work closely with this movie's director there were so many really cool looking shots in this along with the color grading and the lighting were really impressive too which is something that has become somewhat of a rarity in the slew of modern movies there wasn't arguably anything inherently groundbreaking but there was some really beautiful looking shots especially when they were focusing on the German Landscapes present throughout the whole movie which is somewhat its own character in this in all of the scenes the contrast between lights and shadows were always really well placed with each other which made a lot the IM really cool to look at overall I didn't exactly hate this movie but I didn't like it as much as I was expecting to before going into this despite the movie on the Surfers wanting to be this High concept artsy horror movie it's pretty straightforward and isn't too hard to comprent especially when the movie decides to explain everything by the end of it it's a standard horror movie that unfortunately won't do anything for the genre in terms of evolving it in any way but it's an okay addition to the genre which can't be said about many many other entries that end up being nothing but slop so while kuu may not stick The Landing as much as I would have hoped it would there's still some cool stuff here but it leaves a lot to be desired I'm giving cuu three stars this holds some pretty great performances especially with h schaer at the helm along with some really stunning cinematography throughout this scares border from cheap predictable and not being scary at all frankly but still does have some pretty nice creepy atmosphere to satisfy lovers of the genre if more time was dedicate to creating a little more of a cohesive story rather than throwing out so many ideas together I think this could have been a pretty interesting flick but unfort yet didn't do enough to truly grab me by the end of it go go go go up go up