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Feb 17, 2017 · A Wall Street stockbroker (Dane DeHaan) travels to a remote location in the Swiss Alps to retrieve his company's CEO (Harry Groener) from an idyllic but mysterious wellness center.
- (212)
- Gore Verbinski
- R
- Dane Dehaan
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Feb 16, 2017 · Stage 1: curiosity. The very first scene of A Cure for Wellness could have been ripped straight from Mr. Robot: A man who’s alone in a big office at night suddenly keels over and dies.
A Cure for Wellness Reviews. All Critics. Top Critics. All Audience. Verified Audience. Brian Eggert Deep Focus Review. Sheer peculiarity may earn A Cure for Wellness devoted enthusiasts, but...
Feb 16, 2017 · “A Cure for Wellness” is a lustrous box of genre candy, the self-revealing work of an auteur who has laid bare not so much his psyche as his online streaming queue.
- Gore Verbinski
- A.O. Scott
- 146 min
- A horror mystery that just isn’t very scary.
- Verdict
By Alex Welch
Posted: Feb 7, 2017 2:00 pm
It’s one of the strange coincidences this year that just two weeks after Rings hits theaters, the franchise’s original director, Gore Verbinski, will see the release of his long-awaited return to the horror genre with A Cure for Wellness. A psychological horror film about a man slowly losing his mind inside of a labyrinthian sanitarium, the marketing and promotional materials for A Cure for Wellness have been almost entirely composed of vague, unusual images and music meant to lure viewers into seeing the whole film - in the hopes of learning the startling truth behind those scenes.
But there’s a danger to setting up those kinds of expectations, and while A Cure for Wellness proves to be another able-bodied vehicle for Verbinski to show off his visual prowess, viewers will almost undoubtedly find themselves disappointed in how the film answers their questions. Ambitious and dreamlike from its opening frames to the very end, A Cure for Wellness talks a lot about curing the human condition, seemingly unaware of the problems it itself suffers from.
Dane DeHaan leads the film as Lockhart, an ambitious young financial executive who is sent by his bosses to retrieve the company’s CEO from a remote “wellness center” located high up in the Swiss Alps. Once he arrives, Lockhart soon winds up trapped there, and begins to wonder if the spa’s healing methods are actually what they seem, as he learns more about the building’s medieval origins and experiences more troubling “visions” while undergoing the institute’s treatments. Filling out the rest of the main cast is Jason Isaacs as the institute’s mysterious leader, Dr. Volmer, and Mia Goth as the beautiful and “special” Hannah, who spends most of her days singing and walking around the institute by herself, eventually catching Lockhart’s eye.
It’s a basic premise, and one that audiences have no doubt seen before, taking inspiration from cinematic greats like David Cronenberg (especially in its body horror elements) or John Carpenter along the way. At times, it even seems reminiscent of The Shining in how it incorporates the institute’s history into its present day story, with Verbinski trying to evoke the same unpredictable nature with the center’s long and twisting corridors that Kubrick did with The Overlook. But if A Cure for Wellness is truly trying to emulate The Shining, it suffers from far too much buildup and hype for its own good. It’s like if Kubrick kept only showing the twin girls at the end of the hallway for two hours, before suddenly cutting to the final showdown between Jack, Danny, and Wendy, rather than ever showing the woman in room 237 or the hallway of blood.
A Cure for Wellness feels confused and unsatisfying in the face of its own challenging questions and themes, even despite the film’s thought-provoking imagery and fine performances.
- Alex Welch
Feb 7, 2017 · Rated R, 146 minutes. Gore Verbinski's new film 'A Cure for Wellness' is a dystopian thriller about a young executive (Dane DeHaan) who is sent to bring his boss home from a sinister Swiss...
Feb 7, 2017 · ‘A Cure For Wellness’ Review: Gore Verbinski’s Gothic Nightmare Is A Gloriously Demented Dose Of Big-Budget Horror. The "Lone Ranger" director returns with the weirdest studio movie in...
