Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Rango) is one filmmaker if his name is attached, Movie Mensch will be first in line to see the film when it’s released. Dane DeHaan, since he caught our collective eye in Chronicle and so many films since, is easily considered one of our great actors in his up-and-coming generation. So, upon hearing the pair were teaming up on the gothic horror/mind-bender/psychological thrill-fest A Cure for Wellness, we could not have been more excited.
Then we saw it, and could not have been more disappointed.
There is a fine line between a passion project and something that comes off as self indulgent and bloated. A Cure for Wellness is firmly entrenched in the latter and we wish that someone involved in the production had told Verbinski to trim his tries-to-be-epic tale down a bit so it at least brought some sort of suspense to this world.
DeHaan is Lockhart, a Wall Street shooting star that is on the verge of greatness (and wealth) at his Manhattan office. When an upper management colleague fails to return from a mysterious wellness center in the Swiss Alps, the board sends their young financial wizard to Europe to retrieve him as they hope to stave off a company-wide financial meltdown.
Once he arrives at the facility that swears to cure you of what ails you, he quickly finds that something is off. When he’s not allowed to see his co-worker, he leaves in a huff and winds up in a car crash. Leg broken, he awakes in the wellness center… an unwilling patient. From there, Lockhart finds himself getting sucked down a rabbit hole of mystery, intrigue, lies, health horrors and, yes, hallucinations that would make your skin crawl.
Will he ever be able to leave? Will he find his co-worker and be able to save his company? What if the cure is actually what is making you sick? These are just a few of the questions that arise throughout the film, and sadly, Verbinski takes his sweet time answering them, and worse, even raises more questions along the way that muddles the process.
This could have been a taut little thriller. Its subject matter is not all that deep. Instead of a straight-shooting haunting, we get a drawn out, predictable film that is filled to the brim with horror clichés and numerous eye-rolling moments that can have the audience asking some of their own questions. One comes to mind: Can I leave yet?
DeHaan is solid and carries the film on his shoulders. He is in practically every scene and does whatever he can to make this thing work. The young actor continues to impress and let’s hope that he keeps getting the opportunity to shine as he is truly one of the most talented people of his age group.
The supporting cast also does some solid work with what they’re given. Of particular note is the always solid Jason Isaacs, playing the head doctor of the facility, Volmer (if that isn’t a shudder when you hear it name, I don’t know what is!), and Mia Goth as Hannah. The latter is wide-eyed and innocent, despite having spent years at the wellness center, and one would think she would have started seeing cracks in the façade over her time residing there. But alas, she does not. It takes Lockhart’s arrival for her to have her eyes opened to the shock and awful awe that surround her.
Verbinski uses his visuals well, but like a comedy that gives you too many of the jokes in its trailer, A Cure for Wellness reveals too many of its imaginative images in the teaser. Many scenes that should have been jaw-dropping in their delivery, fell flat — if for no other reason than we saw them already, so the big screen rendition lacked that “I’ve never seen this before” power.
Another issue with A Cure for Wellness is its length, and this also plays into Verbinski’s pacing problem. We have no problem with long movies. Yet this one (which clocks in at two-and-a-half-hours), with its story as delivered by Justin Haythe’s screenplay, is way too drawn out and takes an enormous amount of time to make each of its points that fail to add up to much more than a piece of eye candy that occasionally challenges the morality of our collective movie-watching soul.
Grade: C-