While many would know Gore Verbinski chiefly from helping to unleash Captain Jack Sparrow upon an amused world, the director was responsible for far more than just the original three entries of Pirates Of The Caribbean. In fact, I’d argue that thanks to his surprisingly great remake of The Ring, he helped usher in a new generation of horror that argued that a redux didn’t have to be a vision-free, cash grab.
Due to this, I greeted the news that Verbanski was stepping back into the genre back in 2016 with a certain amount of excited glee, as his cool, precise visuals would once again be welcome for whatever twisted story he could come up with. However, upon release, A Cure For Wellness wasn’t exactly greeted with open arms and in some quarters was ironically treated like the plague. Was this reaction warranted, or will a rewatch actually reveal that Verbinski’s talents were actually in rude health? To find out, take a 146 minute runtime and call me in the morning…
We’re introduced to the pale, prickly form of Lockheart, the troubled and disgraced executive at a financial services firm in New York City, as he’s tasked with an important job. To save his reputation, the board of directors have ordered him to a Wellness Centre in the Swiss Alps in order to retrieve Ronald Pembroke – the AWOL CEO who apparently has no intrest in coming back. However, once Lockheart arrives, he can’t help but notice that he’s getting a large amount of resistance from both the staff and the centre’s magnetic owner, Dr. Heinrich Volmer when it comes to getting a meeting with the man he’s come so far to collect. Matters are made all the more complex when the car he’s riding in suddenly hits a deer and crashes, causing him to wake up three days later at the centre with a cast over his broken leg.
Suddenly, the game has changed and Lockheart now finds himself technically one of Dr. Volmer’s patients, which he discovers helps endlessly with the paranoia that some sort of creepy conspiracy is in effect. All of Volmer’s patients seem to see him as some sort of miracle worker to be worshiped, and his water-based treatments are rumoured to be revolutionary. However, Lockheart notices that there’s nothing seems to actually be physically wrong with all the various, pampered people relaxing around the place.
But possibly the most intriguing aspect of this Wellness Centre is the presence of Hannah, a mysterious young girl who loiters about the place who seemingly has no experience of the outside world. As Lockheart attempts to get to know her better and dig into the ancient past of the Centre itself, Volmer’s weirdly sadistic treatments kick in in ernest. But what’s in the little blue bottles the staff and Hannah sip from regularly? What’s the connection between Volmer and the brutal history of the area? And what’s with all the eels?
While the majority of A Cure For Wellness is every bit the atmospheric, hypnotic, fever dream I was hoping that Verbinski would deliver, the body of the film is nevertheless afflicted with one major ailment. The tone, the performances and the stunning cinematography is all top notch as the director weaves a deliberately strange spell as the story gets ever more twisted, however, for all the plus points the film wracks up, a bafflingly long run time often slows the pace down to an agonising crawl. Frustratingly, there’s actually nothing here that warrants the hefty two hour and twenty-six minutes that Verbinski serves up, and there’s long periods where the film just spins in place. To be fair, Verbinski is probably doing that to drive home the isolation and paranoia Dane DeHaan’s Lockheart is experiencing, but I’m sure that there’s other ways to do that beyond making your film nearly two and a half hours in length.
However, with a tight runtime, A Cure For Wellness could have been something of an unnerving pretender, especially when you consider that the director has a strong eye for the weird, and DeHaan is seemingly willing to go through any number of uncomfortable situations for him in order to freak out the audience. Standout sequences such as Lockheart being submerged in a massive hydration tank, only to discover he’s sharing it with enough eels to make The Hitcher from The Mighty Boosh pitch a fit, and a spot of impromptu dentistry that sees a drill bore directly into his front incisor (naturally with no anesthetic – it is a horror film after all), succeed in having us involuntarily recoil in a localised freak out. Similarly, the movie is shot magnificently and with the keen sense of detail that suggests that Verbinski is every inch the equal of such other visual perfectionists as David Fincher – but for every measured shot and perfectly judged camera move, that damn pace kills it every time.
Still, at least the actors keep things moving whenever we’re not staring at undeniably gorgeous frames. While a lot of directors tend to miscast DeHaan in things (Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets being a prime example), Verbinski isn’t afraid to use the actor’s nervous, sly, even unlikable, energy to his benefit as Lockheart carries a metric ton of childhood trauma with him before the movie even starts pumping him full of eels. Also utilised well is a pre-Pearl Mia Goth who plays the strange Hannah with a perfect sense of innocence and detachment. Better yet, the movie obviously recognises that everything is better when you include Jason Issacs with a sinister accent, and so here he comes in a pale suit and a clipped European/Germanic tones to ramp up the creeps.
However, arguably the best thing about A Cure For Wellness is that despite its refined appearance, Verbinski isn’t afraid to go full twisted when the film dips its toe (or should I say fully immerses itself) in some disturbing sexual practises. However, after such a measured tone that strives to promote such dream-like unease, some might find the swing to more pulpier horror during the third act to be a strange fit. Especially when Verbinski hurls an inferno, attempted incest and a superpowered zombie into the mix and it feels like a last minute attempt to try for a big finish after two hours of restraint.
While noticable sections of it don’t quite fit with other bits and that runtime drags some sections toward the perimeter of dull, Verbinski’s visuals, DeHaan’s suffering, Goth’s weirdness and Issac’s accent manages to carry us through whenever the film isn’t doing weird things with elongated fish.
While it certainly has its moments and gives us plenty of early, classic, Mia Goth oddness (chilling in a bathtub full of eels isn’t something that happens to every actress), a lot of Verbinski’s aims are overridden by the fact that this body-horror creeper is just simply too long. Never mind A Cure For Wellness, maybe we should be looking for a cure for overlong running times.
Never mind a physician, is there a script doctor in the house?
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