SPOILER WARNING: The next article offers away some essential particulars about Cuckoo and a few different horror titles starring Dan Stevens, so be cautious as your learn on.
It has been a very wild and bizarre yr for horror films and I imagine that Cuckoo is, simply, among the many absolute weirdest. Nonetheless, I might additionally name author and director Tilman Singer’s thriller – about an American teenager wrapped up in a lethal, otherworldly state of affairs after her household strikes to a German resort – the most effective horror films of the yr, with quite a lot of credit score on account of Dan Stevens.
The English actor is finest recognized for interval dramas like Downton Abbey and Disney’s live-action Magnificence and the Beast remake, for example. But, his efficiency in Cuckoo is just the newest simply the previous couple of years that make him deserving of the horror film icon standing that he, unjustly, he has but to be acknowledged as. So, as a horror fan, I believed I might attempt to give Stevens a lift in notoriety by highlighting just a few of his most notable, scene-stealing contributions to the style in current reminiscence, beginning with the magic he works within the 2024 film.
Dan Stevens Performs A Brilliantly Eccentric Villain In Cuckoo
As many critics have stated about Cuckoo, and I definitely agree, the perplexingly unusual story is carried magnificently by Hunter Schafer’s lead efficiency because the angsty however resourceful horror film character, Gretchen. But, critics and myself additionally imagine the present is stolen proper from beneath the Euphoria solid member by Dan Stevens.
He dons a German accent – which he beforehand adopted, together with relearning the native language, for 2021’s I’m Your Man – to play Herr König, the supervisor of a lodge within the Bavarian Alps that acts as a entrance for preserving a uncommon breed of half-human, half-bird creatures. His devilishly upbeat and shamelessly surreal method to the position lends completely to the supremely odd thriller and, in my view, saves it from being virtually too alienating by making it extra enjoyable.
I Additionally Assume Dan Stevens Is The Finest Factor About Abigail
Cuckoo shouldn’t be the one new horror film that Stevens lent his abilities to this yr. He additionally seems in Radio Silence’s star-studded vampire film, Abigail, as “Frank” – one among six nameless criminals taking part in a ransom plot that includes kidnapping somebody’s younger daughter, who shouldn’t be fairly what she appears.
Whereas nonetheless contemplating the gloriously over-the-top, bloody gore and Alisha Weir’s astonishing work within the title position, I feel Stevens is genuinely the perfect factor in regards to the film and simply offers the perfect efficiency. Even earlier than he set free the large weapons when Frank grew to become the ultimate act’s vampiric large unhealthy, I used to be completely entranced by his skill to make his in any other case despicable position of a corrupt former police detective surprisingly charismatic.
His Cupboard Of Curiosities Function Was Actually One thing Else, Too
One of many strongest circumstances of Stevens’ genius as a horror scene-stealer is his look in the most effective episodes of Guillermo del Toro’s Cupboard of Curiosities. Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, “The Outdoors” stars Kate Micucci as Stacey, who grows so determined to slot in along with her coworkers that she compulsively makes use of a preferred lotion known as Alo Glo, regardless of its bodily damaging impact on her.
Nonetheless, it makes excellent sense why she was coerced into buying and persevering with to make use of this dehumanizing product when you think about who instructed her to get it within the first place: Dan Stevens. His comparatively temporary flip as an eerily charming infomercial host who speaks to Stacey by way of the TV is likely one of the most sensible and memorable performances within the creative horror anthology TV present on Netflix.
These are only some of essentially the most notable and up to date examples of how Dan Stevens’ distinctive method to performing in horror films has made his contributions to the style extra fascinating. There are lots extra to hunt out, equivalent to his lead efficiency in 2014’s The Visitor, and many extra the place these got here from together with his upcoming position reverse Al Pacino as a priest in The Ritual.