A Cure For Wellness Review

3.0 Stars

 

A Cure For Wellness is a psychological thriller about a remote spa in the Swiss Alps.  Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is an ambitious young executive who is tasked with retrieving Pembroke (Harry Groener) the CEO of their company from this spa.  When he arrives, it looks like a mix between a luxury spa and an insane asylum.  There are people doing yoga, exercising, swimming.  They are normal activities done in a creepy looking facility.  Lockhart meets a young woman, Hannah (Mia Goth) who asks if he's there to take the Cure.  He laughs and says he's on his way out.  She comments that no one ever leaves.

When Lockhart arrives, he asks to see Pembroke.  They are passively uncooperative at the "spa", but reluctantly agree to let him visit after 7pm when Pembroke's treatment is finished.  Lockhart agrees to come back and as he leaves the "spa", his driver hits a deer and their car crashes in the woods.  He awakes back at the facility and is being treated for a broken leg.  They convince Lockhart to be treated by them, and he decides to turn his retrieval mission into an investigation of the strange spa that is obviously anything but normal.

Other than that, you really don't get too much from the previews, no matter how many you watch.  But, if you're into psychological thrillers, the images that are beautifully terrifying, classically creepy, and oddly curious make you want to see A Cure For Wellness.  We saw orderlies in tight white t-shirts, white pants and white shoes conducting exercise classes and wheeling patients down long tiled corridors with flickering fluorescent lights overhead.  At one point, Lockhart is submersed in a water tank with a breathing tube and is suddenly surrounded by eels.  

 

The movie itself is hard to describe.  It's like Stanly Kubrik's Clockwork Orange mixed with Steven King's Misery mixed with the Saw movie franchise.  A Cure For Wellness was directed by Gore Verbinksi who directed three of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the cartoon Rango, the failed Lone Ranger reboot, and The Ring.  Verbinski is quite eclectic in his directing ventures and did a great job creating this freaky nightmare that will have you cringing in your seat at times.  

 

It looked like a strange, unsettling, bizarre, crazy, awful thriller.  I gave it a 3.5 Star Prediction.  I'm going to lower the rating slightly to 3 Stars.  It wouldn't be a waste of money in the theatre, it's definitely money better spent as a rental, but most likely not one I'd own.  Mostly, it just moves along too slowly.  The movie is about 2 hours and 20 minutes long and it feels like it.  The last half hour or so, really ends the movie with a bang though.  A lot of revelation and action packed into a well-done conclusion to the movie.   So, what movie will be on my mind next? We shall see.