It’s invariably captivating when a filmmaker with more vision than restraint is handed an enormous sum of money and allowed to do, in essence, whatever they want. Sometimes the result is a rapturous masterpiece (Mad Max: Fury Road) and sometimes it’s a glorious fiasco (Jupiter Ascending), but it’s always intensely watchable. Director Gore Verbinksi’s A Cure for Wellness lies somewhere in between these two poles, although exactly where it falls will depend on how fond the viewer is of its B-movie influences.
Verbinski and screenwriter Justin Haythe have crafted a luscious homage (or successor) to the pulpy gothic horror features churned out by American International Pictures in the 1950s through 70s. Had it been made in that era, A Cure for Wellness would have unquestionably starred Vincent Price. In 2017, the film isn’t so fortunate, although the absence of an overbearing presence on the acting side allows the gorgeous cinematography and retro production design to step into the foreground.
Slippery insider trader Lockhart (Dean DeHaan) is strong-armed by his employers into retrieving the firm’s eccentric CEO from a Swiss spa, the sort of old-school sanitarium where the preferred therapies are steam rooms and mineral baths. Naturally, not all is as it seems, and—echoing Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”—Lockhart soon finds his status blurring from visitor to patient to prisoner.
The story is, frankly, ludicrous: a mad-science labyrinth of amateur sleuthing, bizarre encounters, and nightmare sequences. Verbinski is less concerned with telling a lucid story than with turning each scene into a chilling horror short. At 146 minutes, A Cure for Wellness is a ridiculously indulgent, and yet every sequence feels essential to its black magic. They don’t make them like this anymore, and never did make them with such darkling extravagance (or an R rating).
A Cure For Wellness opens Friday, February 17 in wide release.
