A great way of testing your home cinema setup is to watch a horror movie and see how well you sleep afterwards.
Last year's dread-inducing Cuckoo, for example, is full of unnerving visuals and unsettling sound designed to creep up behind you.
Written and directed by Tilman Singer, Cuckoo is available to stream now on Now TV in the UK, Hulu in the US, and Netflix in Australia.
Boasting a score of 78 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and called out for being "bonkers" and creating a "discomforting atmosphere" by The Guardian, it comes with a classic horror movie setup: a fractured family finds themselves in a remote location where spooky things are happening, the locals aren't what they seem and something nasty is lurking in the woods.
In this case, the action takes place in the beautiful German Alps. Arriving in the tranquil mountains is like going back in time for a rebellious teen forced to tag along with her oblivious father and his new family.
Hunter Schafer from TV series Euphoria plays the girl who quickly starts to notice things are a little odd, largely due to Dan Stevens having fun in a clipped German accent as the family's meticulously weird new boss.
With its European setting and mysterious figure stalking the shadows, Cuckoo harks back to the lurid 70s and 80s horror movies of Dario Argento. These dollops of giallo are whisked in with a touch of The Shining, a mix of Midsommar and a flavour of Rosemary's Baby.
The retro feel also stems from the production design, showing the resort as an appealing place to visit that, upon closer inspection, feels oddly prison‑like with its brutalist lines and eerie emptiness.
Even in the bright sunshine and surrounded by huge glass windows, the mountainous scenery and impenetrable woods begin to seem sinister and enclosing as Schafer's increasingly alienated teen gets more and more creeped out.
The oddly dated design adds to the feeling that we've left the normal, safe world behind – and that's before we start hearing strange shrieks in the night.
Sound design is key to Cuckoo, with nerve-jangling noises coming from somewhere in the trees. The subtle score creeps up with grinding low end and jittery strings – augmented by more off-kilter retro-ness in song selections from the likes of Martin Dupont and Pray for Rain – but it's the animalistic screeching that will have you looking over your shoulder.
The film's entertainingly uncanny atmosphere comes from its meticulous combination of sound and visual design, immersing and isolating us amid nature and architecture at their most unnerving.
While the final explanation may not be a satisfying end to the film's atmospheric horror, it's worth watching for its expertly executed slow-burning weirdness punctuated by hits of loopy gruesomeness. Hallucinatory and horrifying, Cuckoo is a hoot.
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