Not Enough People Are Talking about The Lesbian Romance in Cuckoo

Not enough people are talking about the lesbian romance that was featured in Cuckoo (2024), a chilling horror movie that left me shocked, stunned and surprised. There is so much to unpack in this film, from the sound design to the haunting themes, and so much queering I could do as far as the concept of compulsory heterosexuality is concerned, but those are all topics for another day. Right now, I literally just want to talk about the freaky little gays!

Cuckoo stars the effervescent Hunter Schafer, who has had her fair share of sapphic roles. In this movie she plays a 17-year old American girl named Gretchen who is, as described by Mey Rude of Out Magazine,“ a typical alt teen with a bisexual bob and a guitar.” There’s no real indication Gretchen is queer until her interest is piqued by a veyyyy gay woman named Ed that checks into the creepy resort she works at. The two do some subtle flirting, eye fucking, and hand brushing before making out against a tree and then proceeding to RUN OFF TOGETHER AND HEAD TO FRANCE. I’m sorry, it doesn’t get much more lesbian than that. 

Ed, played by Spanish and French actress Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, is in real life 13 years Hunter’s senior. She definitely reads as much older in the film as well, somewhere in her late twenties to mid-thirties, which is both a bit alarming and very hot. Honestly, it was probably their love story that reignited my appreciation for older women…anyway, at this point in the movie Ed is driving Gretchen out of the country, and the two of them are very much smitten.

Of course, the queers can’t have anything, so the evil hooded woman called “mother” that’s been chasing Gretchen thwarts their escape and gets them into a pretty fucking awful car crash. There’s a scene of Gretchen and Ed in the hospital, where Gretchen is being shepherded off and Ed calls out her name and-

Once again, why would they do this to us?! The gay anguish! We don’t see Ed again until the end of the movie, when she picks Gretchen up from a very bloody final girl scene, and then the two of them are off again in the car, driving to who knows where with Gretchen’s little half-monster sister in tow (yes I know you have no context, if you want to know what kind of weird, horrifying shit happened in this movie you’re just going to have to watch it).

I am dying to know more about these two! Is it too much to ask for a sequel that is solely about them and the lesbian drama I am sure will ensue if Gretchen and Ed end up together for real? What deeper significance does their relationship have in this movie? To be honest, this article is a call for help, a plea if you will. I NEED to talk to someone about Cuckoo’s lesbian plotline, and that hot ass kiss!