Review: A Cure for Wellness
If you're looking for a film in which someone rips their own face off, people are set on fire, eels are forced down people's throats, the Marathon Man dentist scene is recreated, and overtones of incest slither like shredded silk, then Gore Verbinski's A Cure for Wellness may fitfully satisfy your cravings. An homage to classic Val Lewton and Vincent Price movies, the Gothic thriller is heavy on portentous atmosphere but exceedingly overstuffed and far too overlong.
The film begins inside a Manhattan office, empty save for a lone executive in front of his computer surrounded by the buzz of monitor screens. He's not too long for this world, dropping dead of a heart attack within minutes, but his demise paves the way for an ambitious young turk by the name of Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), who is now tasked with traveling to the Swiss Alps to fetch Pembroke (Harry Groener), the company's CEO who has inconveniently retreated to a wellness center just as legal issues threaten an impending merger. It would be the simplest of things, but Lockhart's plan of arriving in the morning and departing with Pembroke later that night doesn't quite go according to plan.
For one thing, he's persistently deterred by the sanitarium's overseer, Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs) and his staff, who find ways of delaying his access to Pembroke. For another, he's distracted by the mysterious Hannah (Mia Goth), the pale young woman who has never left the clinic and who has a penchant for standing on the edge of balconies and looking generally otherworldly. Lockhart is further detained when a car accident leaves him with a broken leg and no other choice but to stay on the grounds and recuperate.
What ensues is akin to an hallucinogenic journey during which Verbinski abandons practically all tethers to narrative or plot. The center, which was the site of a tragic incident involving a deranged baron and his incestuous love for his sister, becomes a veritable house of horrors for Lockhart, who begins seeing both real and imagined visions such as flesh-eating eels, stillborn livestock, bodies suspended in liquid chambers, and other squirm-inducing tableaux. Bojan Bazelli's cinematography lends a rotting aura to the sanitarium's facade of sterility and an appropriately unearthly horror to the proceedings. Eve Stewart's production design makes resourceful use of locations such as Hohenzollern Castle and Beelitz-Heilstätten hospital, infusing every corner and crevice with skin-crawling menace.
Isaacs clearly relishes his role, making hay out of Volmer's calm sadism. DeHaan, looking for all the world as if blood is slowly being leeched from his body, is solid but his and Goth's are essentially one-note portrayals. It's difficult not to admire Verbinski's obvious delight in crafting this exceedingly bonkers Grand Guignol - the finale alone features a giddy ballroom sequence, a conflagration and a Phantom of the Opera-type reveal - but the excess is nothing more than bloat for a film whose premise is intriguing but flimsy.
A Cure for Wellness
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Written by: Justin Haythe
Starring: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Adrian Schiller, Celia Imrie, Harry Groener
