Review of A Cure for Wellness (2017) by Kristofer H — 16 Feb 2017

Proper Perspective: There is an attempt here to make a mystery movie with a twang of thriller, a la Shutter Island. There is also an attempt to make an artsy horror movie too, but this somehow missed all the boats. A Cure For Wellness is a movie without a genre...

Official Synopsis: 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.

Plot: Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to retrieve one of the key members of the board, Pembroke (Harry Groener), of his financial firm after he disappears to a Swiss Wellness Center and writes them that he is not coming back. They need him back for a merger and the SEC is investigating and someone needs to take the fall so the rest can stay rich and first world problems.

When Lockhart arrives he is not given access to Pembroke, so he tries to force things which leads to a car accident (seen in the commercial) followed by him needing to stay at the Wellness Center to recover.

The mystery unravels about a Baron from 200 years ago and finding a cure for his sick sister and the patients are maybe not patients and the doctors might not be as clean as their white outfits and the mystery unravels.

Take: So, this is a movie without a genre. It has a great plot, well the more I think about it the plot is very good, but A Cure For Wellness is trying to paint a thriller with an art house brush and then trace in a horror theme with a mystery stencil.

When you take a step back, the picture just does not look right.

The performances were good across the board. DeHaan is always good in any movie he is in so I liked him and the rest of the cast. Hannah is played by Mia Goth, who I have not seen in anything before, but was terrific as the damaged younger girl at the wellness center. She was the only young person there until DeHann's character shows up so they connect and the two of them were very good together.

Jason Isaacs as the "is he good or is he evil" doctor was great too. The acting was good. The movie was shot well and looked pretty.

The biggest issue with A Cure For Wellness aside from not knowing what it wanted to be was that it was a very, very bloated movie. Rarely should a movie be over two hours in length, this one clocks in at two hours and twenty-six minutes. Gore Verbinski is a good director (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean), but this one missed the mark overall.

Recommendation: There is a great 90 minute thriller in this 146 minute art-house-horror-thriller-mystery, we just didn't get to see that movie. Check this one out if you do not mind muddled movies that are not sure of what they are...

I did not realize Mia Goth was Shia LeBeouf's wife. She is pretty awesome in this movie, excited to see her going forward.