A Cure for Wellness

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 " ..

I was really excited about this movie when the trailer came out, I could not wait to see it. But after reading multiple bad comments about the film, I got worried.

But I must say, nothing to worry about. The movie is kinda weird maybe, but if you watch the trailer you know what you're settling in for, I suppose.

The story develops itself kinda slow, but that didn't bother me cause I was intrigued by the story. The movie has good actors, a great setting and atmosphere.

It kinda reminded me of Shutter Island, I think because of the whole "mystery island with a weird cure-institution"-thing.

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.

(I saw a preview screening of this.)

Director Gore Verbinski is best known for the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and also Rango, The Ring, and The Mexican, so "quietly understated" is not really his thing, If the Pirates movies are kind of a throwback to old Hollywood swashbucklers, this is a more lurid version of old Gothic suspense thrillers like "Rebecca" or "The Island of Doctor Moreau."

The main character is Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), who is the exact sort of morally bankrupt young financial hotshot you've seen in a bunch of other movies. His bosses are so cartoonishly evil that they may as well be counting wads of cash as they tell him he's being sent off to Europe to fetch a wayward executive whose signature is needed to allow a merger to go forth so as to allow them to rake in more millions. (Oddly, a similar plot undergirds the otherwise-completely different Will Smith vehicle "Collateral Beauty.")

Most of the rest of the movie takes place in a Swiss Alps sanitarium where practically everything looks like it's from some time in the first half of the last century. I half expected John Harvey Kellogg to show up, but instead we get Volmer (Jason Isaacs), the place's director. As with the patients and the staff, there's something not quite right about the overly affable man, and the impatient Lockhart has plenty of time to figure it out after an accident delays his trip back to New York.

Exactly what's going on, and why no one ever seems to leave the place, takes quite a while (almost 2.5 hours) to unspool, but Verbinski successfully distracts the viewer with visually arresting images of hallways, of peacefully exercising old people, of slithery fish, of living and maybe dead bodies in all shapes and sizes (but mostly white and old), and so on. A teen girl (aptly named Mia Goth), the only young person besides Lockhart, may hold some clues. Rather than a lush island, the sanitarium is high on a mountain, but the effect is the same, as if the viewer has been transported to a world apart.

Does this all sound good? Then you'll probably like this very dark fable. The deep mystery of why the place is so strange is possibly layered with too much complication. I think everything fits together pretty well, but I'm not positive. I am positive that this is definitely going to be a lot different than anything else in the multiplex whenever you might choose to see it.

"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.