There is a level of audacity to Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness that I can’t help but admire. On paper, it’s not the type of film that generally gets a big studio push in this day and age, but yet, 20th Century Fox is going all out for Verbinski’s weirdly surreal exploration of the one thing none of us can escape—our mortality—and I dig that he once again takes an avant-garde route to give us a grandiose, epic gothic horror movie that wears its influences on its sleeves, yet at times feels like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.
If you distill Cure down to its basic elements, though, it’d be safe to say it feels like if Hammer Films did their own version of Shutter Island, but really, that only accounts for about 30% of what Verbinski achieves here. The bottom line is, while A Cure for Wellness feels like it easily could have been about 20 minutes shorter (more on that later), Verbinski’s dreamlike exploration of humanity’s pursuit for perfection is absolutely stunning, wholly unforgettable, and totally worth seeing on the big screen if you can.
In Cure, Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, Metallica Through the Never) portrays Lockhart, an up-and-coming financial trading company executive who must travel to Switzerland to retrieve Pembroke (Harry Groener), one of the heads of his company who has gone into seclusion after attending a “wellness center” tucked away in the mountains. The center is known for the healing powers of its water and the supposedly patient-first treatment methods of its enigmatic leader, Director Volmer (Jason Isaacs).
When Lockhart arrives, he’s greeted by an idyllic sanctuary where old, rich executives retreat to once they’ve been pushed too far in their careers. The health-centric clinic is now where they all desire to spend the rest of their days (which are numbered, of course, unbeknownst to any of them), including Pembroke, who rebuffs Lockhart’s insistence that he come back to the States with him. Realizing that he’s not going to get through to the elder executive, Lockhart departs the facility empty-handed, but as we’re warned earlier on, “No one ever leaves,” and that includes Lockhart, who ends up on his own journey towards “the cure” after a car accident leaves him hobbled and unable to travel.
To say anything more about what happens in A Cure for Wellness would be not only a huge disservice to Verbinski’s defiantly brazen story, but to you guys as well, because for over two hours I was completely lost in the film’s wonderfully weird and unsettling cinematic terrain, where half the movie I had no idea where it was going, and the other half of the movie I knew precisely where it was going (if you’re a Hammer fan, you’ll see those cues early on). Despite the film’s flaws, I love that 20th Century Fox got behind this movie and is pushing it as though it were based on a popular property or a sequel in a successful franchise. You don’t get too many studio horror films like Cure anymore, so that alone makes Verbinski’s latest feel like something of a landmark event.
The thing is, the second act of A Cure for Wellness feels a bit self-indulgent, as the mystery fueling Lockhart’s journey just seems to spin its wheels in familiarity for about 20 minutes. In that time span, there’s no story progression, just some more weird stuff that will definitely test the patience of some viewers, but I promise that when that third act kicks in—holy crap—you are in for some truly amazing insanity, particularly in regards to Hannah (Mia Goth), Volmer’s adoptive daughter of sorts who finds a kindred spirit in Lockhart.
On a visual level, nearly every single frame of A Cure for Wellness feels like a work of art, and I tip my hat to DP Bojan Bazelli (who also lensed The Ring for Verbinski), as he delivers some of the best camera compositions I’ve seen since Mad Max: Fury Road.
As a whole, A Cure for Wellness feels a bit excessive at times, but as far as provocative and boldly bizarre horror movies go, Verbinski runs the gauntlet here with an effort that I can’t help but admire despite a few bumps in the road. Cure left me uncomfortable at times and tested my endurance as a viewer more than once, but damn if its last 30 minutes aren’t some of the most absurdly daring moments I’ve seen from a major release in years.
Movie Score: 3.5/5
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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