Horror film ‘A Cure for Wellness’ is fascinating but flawed

Though Gore Verbinski has made a name for himself with large Hollywood studio pictures like “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Lone Ranger,” he’s always had a weird streak; a “one for them, one for me” mentality, interspersing in films like “The Weather Man” and “Rango.” “A Cure for Wellness,” a horror film set at a spa in the Swiss Alps, is most definitely one for him.

Here, “wellness” could easily be a euphemism for “wealth.” A powerful Wall Street banker, Pembroke (Harry Groener), runs off to a Swiss spa and writes back to his comrades about truths that he can’t unsee and that he’s not returning. An upstart young banker, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), is sent to retrieve him to stave off a business emergency, pressed into action by his superiors with threats of blackmail.

Lockhart swaggers into the spa like he owns the place, but it’s not easy to get his boss on the next red-eye back to New York. He suffers a car accident and broken leg, and everyone keeps pushing the special water on him. Once you check in, it’s near impossible to check out. He’s ultimately drawn into the morbid tale of the place’s history, about a mad baron, a baroness, his sister, and the villagers who burned them to the ground.

Written by Verbinski and Justin Haythe, the film is inspired by Thomas Mann’s 1924 book “The Magic Mountain.” It plays on the desire for a magic tonic to cure the creeping ails of modern life