United States, Germany · 2017
Rated R · 2h 26m
Director Gore Verbinski
Starring Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Harry Groener
Genre Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller
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An ambitious young executive is sent to retrieve his company's CEO from an idyllic but mysterious "wellness center" at a remote location in the Swiss Alps but soon suspects that the spa's miraculous treatments are not what they seem.
We get a few effective set pieces early on that provide the requisite scares that A Cure for Wellness so obviously wants to deliver, but the movie just doesn’t know when to quit, lurching onward and growing more and more ludicrous.
It is all of the harrowing horror of an asylum film with none of the deeper, more disconcerting subtext or mind-bending logic puzzles — a film not entirely devoid of merit, but nonetheless hobbled by poor storytelling.
Most gratifying throughout A Cure for Wellness is the moment-to-moment anticipation of where Gore Verbinski will put his camera next.
Verbinski packs so much stuff into his giddy Grand Guignol, and the more he crams in the better it works.
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
A Cure For Wellness is an exercise in watching a film continually stifle itself at its most compelling moments.
We Got This Covered by Matt Donato
In its braggadocios final form, genre fans have a unicorn watch that surely won’t be replicated anytime soon. Points for creativity, points for ambition, and points for a studio showing the balls to back provocative genre cinema.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The movie’s operatic claustrophobia makes its mark. Cult status beckons.
The movie deprives us of either a tragic villain or a sympathetic lead, hoping that its grab bag of squirm-inducing details — dental drills, stillborn livestock, flesh-eating eels — will suffice, when in fact, they reveal how a shorter, tighter treatment ought to have done the trick.
What “Cure” doesn’t do particularly well is introduce a mystery, add menace and heighten suspense in racing towards a conclusion. There’s no “Race” for the “Cure.” Still, it’s just chilling to experience, a novel and thought-provoking take on what ails us and our fruitless search for relief.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
Over-produced and under-thought-out, this unconscionably elaborate attempt at an old-fashioned Gothic thriller looks great but is beyond silly.