The film distributor NEON has been on a streak of horror films starring young blonde women. Earlier this year we had Immaculate, in which Sydney Sweeney plays a nun impregnated by deranged priests. Last month’s Longlegs stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent tracking down a serial killer who might be executing the literal will of Satan. They say you need three examples for a trend, and now we have Cuckoo, in which Hunter Schafer (Sweeney’s co-star on the HBO series Euphoria) plays Gretchen, a young woman trapped in a mountain resort where strange, deadly things happen without any rational explanation. Writer and director Tilman Singer refuses to explain too much—hoping the macabre imagery will speak for itself—but he leans too far in to unabashed weirdness, which ultimately removes any real catharsis from his film.

The setting is a neat inversion of The Shining. Instead of a summer resort that’s empty over the winter, Singer opts for a winter resort in the Bavarian Alps that is mostly empty over the summer. At the center of the film, Gretchen is forced to go on a mountain retreat with her family against her will. Desperate for time away from her stepmother, Beth (Jessica Henwick), and younger half-sister, Alma (Mila Lieu), the sullen teen quickly accepts a receptionist job at the resort after its director Herr König (Dan Stevens) takes pity on her. But when Gretchen starts working the late shift, she notices a strange, perhaps demonic woman wandering the otherwise abandoned roads. Singer keeps us invested by keeping us unsure—though her glowing red eyes offer some clues.

At first, the culture clash between Europe and the United States is enough to unsettle Gretchen, and the audience by extension. Stevens delights in this kind of a role, an unwaveringly polite weirdo whose deference is a mask for his true, sinister nature. Gretchen sees right through him almost immediately, and indeed Schafer’s commanding performance is the best part of Cuckoo. She starts as a rebellious teen, the kind who is bad at her job through laziness and eventually outright malice, only to develop into a terrified, resourceful young woman who has no choice but to trust her instincts. Singer also attaches us to Gretchen by injuring her throughout the story. Her cast and head bandage make her into an unlikely looking heroine, but it also leads to moments of sympathy: She has no choice but to fight through the literal pain.

If Gretchen’s character arc is the best thing about Cuckoo, then the resort’s dark nature is where the film falters. Singer introduces some intriguing flourishes, like when the aforementioned demon woman seemingly has the ability to manipulate time and control minds with her piercing siren (the sound designers chose a truly unsettling scream—a callback to the shriek you would hear in the score from the Alien franchise). The film also offers a subplot involving a cop (Jan Bluthardt) seeking vengeance against his dead wife, and while he is Gretchen’s ally for a time, they reach an impasse the script barely explores. In these cases and others, the film has a reluctance that ultimately seems more lazy than uncompromising.

Unlike many of his genre contemporaries, Singer is happy to keep his audience in the dark, and there are long stretches of the film where we have no idea what’s really happening. It only works because we are right there with Gretchen, and by the time her worst suspicions are confirmed, the lack of adequate follow-through denies Schafer true “final girl” status. Trust is implicit in this relationship between the filmmakers and the audience, and while Cuckoo is not the kind of film where we need a detailed explanation, the big reveals are a letdown because the first two acts are so audacious. If a horror film does not abide by many genre rules, it is self-defeating when the climax devolves into another boring and cliche ending.

In the recent NEON horror trend of frightened young blonds, Schafer gives a true breakout performance. Sweeney and Monroe had already been more established when their films premiered. Here, Schafer imbues Gretchen’s backstory with genuine heart—like when she mourns for her dead mother by leaving her voicemail messages. That kind of mourning could be considered overdone, and yet Schafer’s plays these scenes so convincingly that the familiarity hardly matters. These scenes indicate Singer’s deep affection and empathy with his flawed protagonist, and so his relative disinterest to develop real conflicts for her means Cuckoo is kind of lopsided. A worthy hero needs a worthy foe, and no matter how much Singer wishes otherwise, the promise inherent to an unusual horror atmosphere is not enough.

Cuckoo (R, 102 minutes) opens in area theaters on Aug. 9.