Boredom is a Symptom in A Cure for Wellness
A Cure for Wellness lets Gore Verbinski create a bloated, if effective, throwback to Gothic horror with a finale that will leave you thoroughly skeezed.
The Alps are dark and full of terrors, at least according to A Cure for Wellness’ director Gore Verbinski. The director who gave us the first Pirates of the Caribbean and the English-language remake of The Ring returns with the Gothic thriller A Cure for Wellness. Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli exquisitely shoots and composes a breathtakingly somber film with creeps around every corner. The problems lie in an excessively lengthy runtime resulting in repetition of scares before an utterly bizarre finale.
A man named Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to a wellness center in Switzerland to bring back a business associate. Once there Lockhart gets into an accident leaving him with a broken leg and no way home. The center offers him care, but the “treatment” they’re prescribing might end with Lockhart’s death.
A Cure for Wellness’ strength lies in its look, that borrows elements from Norman Rockwell, The Sound of Music and Verbinski’s own The Ring. The washed-out color palette contrasted with the breathtaking mountains in the background create a world both isolated and out-of-time. Lockhart lives in the rush-a-day world of high-finance that connotes the modern day, but upon entering Switzerland there’s a quality that’s decidedly not of this era. Lockhart’s wanderings through the town nestled in the shadow of the center sees him meeting a butcher with a mentally challenged son, various low-rent characters and Neo-Nazi punks that got lost in 1983. Within the center itself there’s a clean, elegant quality with an emphasis on retro furnishings and white tile.
This sense of order belies the darker mystery within. Screenwriter Justin Haythe has a mixed bag of prestigious Oscar bait (Revolutionary Road) and terrible misfires (The Lone Ranger). His script for A Cure for Wellness is equally mixed. There’s little exposition presented short of giving Lockhart a reason to travel to Switzerland. A methodical mystery unfolds with Lockhart trying to assert whether the person he’s come to bring home is truly insane. Once that’s ascertained, fairly quickly for a 126-minute film, the rest of the runtime splits between Lockhart’s attempts to escape and the actual explanation at the heart of the center’s creation.
With all these competing plots some are more interesting than others, leading to peaks and valleys in a film that’s far too long. Lockhart discovers something, tries to prove it, is waylaid and starts over. The lather-rinse-repeat nature of it all leaves the audience wondering if Lockhart truly is mad because he expects different results from the same actions. Verbinski and crew certainly embrace the myriad tones the film has because of its multiple threads.
The overarching feeling is one of ominousness. Lockhart knows something is wrong, as does the young Hannah (Mia Goth), but there are very few insights into what that might involve before the big reveal. There are absolutely no red herrings, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. Because Lockhart has to create theories out of whole cloth, it leaves him wandering without any real destination for long stretches.
There’s a heavy reliance on typical creepy tropes, almost like this is a playbook for Horror 101. Weird foreign setting where Aryan-esque characters’ grins are permanently plastered to their faces? Check. A suave Englishman with all the answers? Check. A little girl’s “la-la-la” soundtrack. Double check! There are even scenes culled directly from the likes of Marathon Man (an homage that still terrified me), Soylent Green and the Are You Afraid of the Dark episode “The Dangerous Soup.” I’m not kidding about that last one!
Dane DeHaan still doesn’t come off like an actor with any particular persona, and here his character comes off no different than his Harry Osborne in Spider-Man. Every line DeHaan speaks comes off like that of a petulant teenager irritated that he has to do chores. There’s no sense of emotion or nuance to his performance. Anyone could have done it, so it’s doubtful this does anything for him, career-wise. Mia Goth’s wide-eyes, stick-straight hair and pale skin certainly situate her as the film’s princess, but it’s predominately a role reliant on her virginity, culminating with a nude scene and assault that was too authentic for comfort. Jason Isaacs is the scene-stealer as the duplicitous center director, Volmer. Isaacs’ mien and charm is too good for this film, but it enhances the memorable nature of the utterly insane finale.
Without spoiling things, the finale borrows elements from The Phantom of the Opera and Eyes Wide Shut that will leave you wishing the film embraced its weirdness faster than it ends up doing. The sexual assault elements do undo much of the goodwill established in the showy, crazy finale, but it’s ultimately what you’ll remember it for.
Related Story: ‘Split’ Entertains and Divides in Equal Measure
A Cure for Wellness is one of the best-looking films of the year so far, and the script isn’t afraid to go for broke. Had the runtime been pared down, allowing for a tightening of the storytelling, it would have the potential to be a horror classic.