A Cure for Wellness
Dir Gore Verbinski, Germany/USA 2016 On UK release
After receiving a strange letter from CEO Roland Pembroke (Harry Groener), the board members of his company order the young executive Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) to bring Pembroke back from a wellness centre in the Swiss Alps to sign off the final paperwork on an important merger. Arriving at the wellness centre, the callously ambitious Lockhart is unimpressed by the idyllic scenery; he simply wants to find Pembroke and get back to business: but the businessman is nowhere to be found. Increasingly frustrated by the centre’s staff being seemingly unwilling to help, Lockhart begins to suspect that something is terribly wrong with this place. When he wakes with a broken leg after a freak accident, he continues his search for Pembroke, but his quest is soon overshadowed by the increasingly sinister discoveries he makes around the facility.
Gore Verbinski can hardly be considered a consistent filmmaker, with flops such as The Lone Ranger on his résumé, but some- thing he always seems to get right are the stunning visuals. Among his better work was the 2002 American remake of The Ring, which showed that not only does he know how to make a film that looks good, but also how to create mesmerisingly unnerving imagery – and there is plenty of nightmare fuel in A Cure for Wellness. With this latest effort, Verbinski has made an original piece of gothic horror and, despite its dark subject matter, another stunningly beautiful film. The cinematography, editing and colour grading all help to create lusciously serene visuals in deceptively soothing shades of blue, and the excellent sound design matches the imagery so well that it can almost be considered a character in its own right.
Just as the visuals have a beautiful, dreamlike quality, the hefty runtime of 2 hours and 26 minutes is used to further create the sense of being inside a waking nightmare; not only does the film’s length provide the opportunity to drag the viewer ever deeper down the disturbingly dark rabbit hole that is its story, it also creates a sense of time being warped because we are not constantly jumping from scene to scene. Naturally, the mere fact that a horror film is this long will be reason enough for some moviegoers to give it a miss, but if you are willing to keep an open mind as you go along for the leisurely ride, there is a good chance that you will be enthralled by the storytelling. By allowing the film to linger on seemingly insignificant elements, a greater sense of mystery is achieved, which in turn makes the film that much more unsettling, even when Lockhart is doing something as simple as hobbling around on his crutches.
Even though the film does an impressive job of building a tremendously sinister and mysterious atmosphere, the final act is ever so slightly disappointing. The story struggles towards the end, although this may in part be because the film wants to take the audience, thematically, to certain places that many people do not care to visit – even in the name of horror. However, it should be said, this is not due to the body horror shown in the film; that particular brand of horror was perfected by filmmakers such as David Cronenberg, and while lesser filmmakers have overused it in recent years, here it is thankfully used sparingly, sprinkled on at intervals, ensuring that the film remains truly unpleasant without turning into another gratuitous torture porn extravaganza. But make no mistake, despite such restraint, this film is not for the squeamish.
A Cure for Wellness is one of those movies that splits both critics and audiences down the middle. Whether you love it or hate it, the fact that the film dares to be so deliriously different is commendable in the current cinematic climate, where originality tends to be shunned in favour of the financial rewards promised by reviving past successes. While the film goes places with its Lovecraftian brand of gothic horror that many people will find deeply disturbing, it never stoops to the tired horror movie tricks of jump scares and gore solely for the sake of shock value. This strange piece of cinema has all the makings of a cult classic.