A Cure for Wellness

Gore Verbinski has created a visually splendid thriller/horror film, which creates a wonderfully foreboding atmosphere. However, what could have been a great film is marred by a convoluted screenplay that falls to pieces in its final act, and is riddled with plot holes. I waited patiently for all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place (and with the running time approaching 2 and a half hours, it's quite a wait), yet ultimately I was left somewhat confused and underwhelmed by how it all played out.

I still recommend it for the wonderful cinematography and chilling atmosphere. But with some liberal editing and a tighter screenplay we could have had a real classic on our hands. Shame.

Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is a corrupted young executive. The board is pushing for a merger and they send Lockhart to retrieve CEO Pembroke from a mysterious wellness center in remote Swiss Alps. Both the board and Lockhart agree to pin his indiscretion on Pembroke. Upon arriving, Lockhart senses some strangeness from Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs) and the various people. He gets into a car accident with a deer and wakes up with a cast on his leg being cared for in the wellness center. He is taken with strange beauty Hannah.

I find the brooding moodiness intriguing. I love the body horror aspects. It could have stayed a simple horror which would be much better. It goes off into some slightly questionable directions. It should be much harder for Lockhart to leave the hospital. The tension would be higher if he's forced to stay. Trying to escape is a great way to raise the intensity. The movie plays with the reliability of Lockhart's perception but that could be sharper. DeHaan as a lead continues to struggle with a tinge of personal demon. Overall, I love the mood and the style but the story could be improved.

This film feels like a Black Mirror episode - but one that treads water for almost two and a half hours without ever reaching its main idea. 250% longer, but only a fraction of the satisfaction.

I really wanted to immerse myself in its atmosphere and ideas, the idea of a David Lynch/Cronenberg style Shining/Shutter Island film seems great. But the film really tests your patience. The main character is icy and unlikable, the other characters are similarly distant. Stuff happens, a lot of stuff, some of it great looking, but with nothing to tie it together or the any character depth to engage with, it ends up feeling like you're being taken through a film students visual exhibition that doesn't end soon enough.

It really doesn't live up to the amazing film that the trailer suggests, a pattern that seems to be more and more common with films these days. Similar to Passengers, I wonder if moments were shot just to make the trailer more powerful in selling the film.

Director deserves applause for depicting a brilliant psychological horror with intencse thrill , stunning cinematography , sound , brilliant direction , performance are enough to make it must watch , it will give you feelings like "Shutter island " ..

"A Cure for Wellness" follows an ambitious, young New York financial executive who is sent to Switzerland to retrieve a colleague who has indefinitely extended his stay at a mountaintop sanitorium known for its therapeutic mineral waters. Hiding behind the veneer of medicine, however, is something far darker.

Though it's taken a critical beating, "A Cure for Wellness" is a bit of an underdog in my book. It's a big-budget picture backed by a major studio that is a financially dangerous mix of genres, references, and ideas. It's, in a word, ambitious—and a gamble on just about all fronts. The result is phenomenal in many regards, less so in others, but given the current climate of the horror film, this movie offers a lot of things that you simply do not see much of in genre films (or just films in general, for that matter) anymore.

One could list the aesthetic references for days, though director Gore Verbinski seems to be heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock in compositions, David Cronenberg in theme, and Mario Bava in both—and that's probably just the tip of the iceberg. In any case, the film is visually sumptuous, and honestly one of the best-photographed films I've seen in perhaps years. Stunning compositions of the castle yard and the surrounding Swiss Alps need to be seen to be believed, while the vintage hospital interiors are equally stunning and atmospheric for different (and more sinister) reasons. While the first twenty minutes of the film are wildly contemporary, everything that follows seems to be framed within a pre-World War II vacuum.

Needless to say, the film is visually incredible and saturated in a Euro-Gothic atmosphere that to me seemed quite reminiscent of Bava (think "Kill, Baby... Kill!" stretched to big-budget parameters). In terms of narrative, the film is borderline mythical, weaving an entire history of the sanitorium that, though contrived, is enough to pique the interest of any self-respecting genre fan. The main problem here is that the unfurling of that history and its relationship to what is happening at the sanitorium is not only semi-predictable, but it begins to drag its feet a bit in the last act of the film, coming to a conclusion that, though appropriate, feels slightly pedestrian. I don't want to say the film devolves, but it certainly does cross the threshold from "genuinely unique amalgam" to "semi-predictable psychological thriller" somewhere in the third act.

In spite of this, however, the film is undeniably fun, and remains engrossing from start to finish; though the two and a half-hour run time could have been trimmed a bit, the film never felt tedious to me, probably because of how skillfully it was able to invent and then wallow in its own world. Solid performances also help; Dane DeHaan convincingly plays the young and assertive financier, while Mia Goth is an ethereal and guileless patient whom he befriends (and who plays a key part in what is to come). Jason Isaacs is also sinister as the cool, self-possessed leader of the hospital.

While "A Cure for Wellness" certainly deserves some hits for taking a few predictable narrative routes, I am still somewhat surprised that it's gotten the negative feedback it has from critics. I think genre fans will genuinely appreciate it—ranging from sci-fi fans to through-and-through horror cinephiles like myself—because it uses its references smartly and evokes an atmosphere that is truly overpowering. There is enough heady Gothic atmosphere, body horror, and psychological paranoia to keep everybody engaged. Even when it's predictable and even when its own mythos registers too absurd, I can't bring myself to knock it because there is so much it gets right—but I suppose my greater point is that, even when it doesn't get it right, you never feel compelled to look away. 8/10.