Movie Review—A Cure for Wellness

A Cure for Wellness
Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O'Connell

A Cure for Wellness. Released: Feb. 2017. Runtime: 146 mins. MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content and images, sexual content, including an assault, graphic nudity, and language.

The healthcare institution that is not a very healthy place to be has been a trope of horror tales and social melodramas ever since Edgar Allan Poe's “The System of Dr. Tarr and Dr. Fether” in 1845. Films using the situation include Spellbound and The Snake Pit in the 1940s, The Cobweb in the 1950s, Shock Corridor in the 1960s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the l970s, and Shutter Island a few years ago. Now director Gore Verbinski has given us A Cure for Wellness.

The movie deals with the attempt of Lockhart (Dale DeHaan), a young American executive, to retrieve his company's CEO, Pembroke (Harry Groener), from a “wellness center” at a remote location in the Swiss Alps. If Lockhart cannot bring Pembroke back, both Lockhart and the company will be in much trouble. The problem is, Pembroke doesn't want to go back. 

Pembroke says that he is not well enough to return yet but is quite satisfied with the treatment that he is receiving at the center, which is a sprawling castle located on a mountaintop and presided over by a Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs). Like most of the patients there, Pembroke seems to drift around in a kind of Stepfordian state. An exceptional patient, however, is Hannah (Mia Goth; you gotta love that name!), a virginal, waif-like young woman with eyes as big as those in a Keane painting. 

Lockhart—played by DeHaan in a kind of younger, blander DiCaprio mode—becomes attracted to the weirdly appealing Hannah and at one point takes her into a village down the mountain. The villagers play a role that seems a kind of combination of the peasants in the classic Frankenstein film and that of rednecks in horror films set in rural America. The villagers don't like the folks in the castle because of resentments going back centuries. 

An auto accident puts Lockhart in a cast so that he cannot leave the spa and must undergo the same kind of treatment that the other patients are receiving. The treatment involves a lot of hydration and a lot of hydrotherapy. The problem is, the water in the bottles and the baths is usually filled with, among other things, eels! Don't you hate it when that happens? Lockhart does. 

Lockhart struggles to recover from his treatments, investigate what is really going on at the castle, and maintain a relationship with Hannah. Eventually, historical research ties all three of these phenomena together for him just in time for an apocalyptic series of events, including a waltz of many couples in white intercut with a man on fire whirling in agony. 

Gore Verbinski has been dubbed a “visionary” director by some for his work on this and other films. This sobriquet seems invalid. Doesn't a “vision” have to involve more than just “visuals”? Doesn't it have to be part of a larger worldview? Verbinski presents some striking visuals—of locations, production design, special effects--but where's the larger vision of, well, “wellness.” Without that the movie is simply—wait for it—sickening.