It is one of the odd coincidences of this year that after only two weeks since Rings was released, Gore Verbinski, the original director of the franchise will have his long anticipated return to horror with A Cure for Wellness. The marketing and promotional materials are in form of a labyrinthine asylum as they have almost entirely comprised of obscure images and music that serve as a bait to get more people to watch the film in anticipation to discover what is behind those weird scenes.
However there’s danger in creating such expectations for oneself and while A Cure for Wellness does prove that it is another visual feast from Verbinski, it will fail to provide satisfactory answers for many viewers. An ambitious work that is always dream-like from its first frames until the final scene, A Cure for Wellness speaks about healing human nature on end but has never thought about its own issues.
Dane DeHaan stars as Lockhart, an ambitious young financial executive who must go and fetch his company’s CEO from a remote Swiss Alps wellness center. As he arrives at their destination however, he finds himself becoming confined like other people before him. As he discovers more about the building’s medieval roots and undergoes treatments involving some harrowing “visions” among others; Lockhart begins questioning whether or not the spa really heals anyone at all. Also featuring Jason Isaacs as Dr. Volmer –the institute’s mysterious head -and Mia Goth as Hannah- a beautiful but ‘special’ lady who sings all day long and roams around the hospital alone catching Lockhart’s attention by chance.
This is a simple plotline one that audiences may have seen before or borrowed from great movies such as John Carpenter along with David Cronenberg (especially when looking at body horror aspects). Sometimes even The Shining seems present here particularly when portraying the institution’s past concurrent with today while Verbinski tries to capture The Overlook Hotel’s same sense of twistedness outlined through long and winding corridors on the other hand. Although it is true that A Cure for Wellness is trying to establish a sort of Shining-like atmosphere, it is too overrated and protracted. This would be similar to Kubrick making us watch the twin girls at the end of the hallway for two hours before jumping right into a final confrontation between Wendy, Danny and Jack without showing room 237 woman or blood stream down the corridor.
However, this does not imply that A Cure for Wellness fails to present a variety of different shockers. Rather, it is simply unable to raise the stakes or build up the intensity required to make it truly effective. In fact, throughout almost the entirety of the movie, we repeatedly see some actions taking place in the same monotonous fashion without much consequence; Lockhart explores the facility and then finds something terrible about it or has a terrifying dream, Volmer brings him back to his room and he sneaks out the next night. Every time he finds out something new about center, he tries telling someone but no one listens to him, even when he can easily leave anytime. He’s probably one of those dumbest horror characters for many years now.
However, DeHaan’s portrayal of Lockhart as simultaneously conceited and likable goes a long way toward making his idiocy more tolerable; however, by the time you get further into its ungodly nearly two and a half hour run time, these mistakes are unforgivable. And DeHaan really gets nothing much done with his character either – in many cases Isaacs merely plays cat-and-mouse games with him while volmer is allowed more fun in playing than other actor on set does. He treats his role with a certain kind of delicacy that sometimes makes me wonder how bad he might be despite dialogue in films as well as Verbinski’s camera positions conspiring against me though making clear what evil means.
A Cure for Wellness contains numerous messages from director Gore Verbinski and writer Justin Haythe which seemingly revolve around toxic ambition and pride typically witnessed in corporate America (Rundown & business). Equally interesting is another point that film passes across on societies’ desire always wanting improving itself; which is expressed severally in scenes where patients at wellness center talk about finding The Cure without anyone expounding what The Cure is supposed to be. Is the human condition inherently flawed? Or is the fault that we all have a nagging suspicion there has to be?
As such, Verbinski and Haythe avoid answering any of those questions and instead endeavor to produce that same unsettling feeling through various horrific images like lady with snakes in her bath tub, a spa shower without an outlet or a handle on toilet that rattles at night. Most of these sequences are quite unnerving at the beginning of the film but they end up becoming repetitive as time goes by.
The Cure for Wellness movie is unnecessarily long. This movie is as long as it should be. Many modern horror films such as It Follows, The Witch and The Anatomy of Jane Doe have tried to mix the elements of horror and detective genres just like Cure for Wellness but in distinction with them, this film bites more than it can chew, raising too many questions that any audience who has watched a few movies before could anticipate their answers from the beginning of the film’s first act. A cure for wellness is a film about ambition’s toxicity. Victims’ warnings are not listened to by “A Cure For Wellness” even though they know their victim’s lives are at stake.
Verdict
Despite the thought-provoking imagery and impressive performances in the film, A Cure for Wellness is confused and disappointing in terms of its challenging questions and themes.
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