Review of A Cure for Wellness (2017) by Otto T — 15 Jun 2017

The amount of movies that are ripped off while making this one grows as the movie goes on, and pretty soon it feels like the entire thing is a compilation of scenes the director liked in other movies.

You will find scenes reminiscent of gothic horror classics, lovecraftian labyrinths, pseudoscience, actual science, "psychological horror", "twists" and many more.

Unfortunately anyone who has seen some horror movies will probably be unable of shaking that feeling of having seen it all before. And when the movie finally starts doing its own thing its not very impressive or clever. It also makes you wait for these unsatisfying conclusions. There was a total of three times I thought the movie was over, after which it continued on with weirdly unfitting scenes which, even though the narrative is easy to grasp, makes you feel like you are jumping from one cinematic style to another. This makes it very hard to get immersed in this movie and pretty soon it just becomes tiresome and unwillingly funny.

Additionally there are multiple irritating mistakes and plotholes. One example is when the protagonist is locked in a sensory deprivation tank which has a window and is lit with industrial lights. This effectivelly defeats the point of sensory deprivation which will take anyone who knows this out of the movie completely because its too much of an obvious idiocy. This was probably done so we as the audience could see what is going on in the tank but it could have been accomplished a different way. Even funnier is when the character almost drowns in it and in a panic declares that there was something in the tank, answered by somebody holding a flashlight inside and saying there is nothing there.

This is funny because 30 seconds earlier some exposition dialogue explains to the protagonist that he might have hallucinations in there, yet neither he nor the hospital staff even consider the possibility that he had one.

That is one example of bad script. If youre not going to consider it later, why even put in a line about hallucinations at all?

Also painfully clear is that this movie was written by somebody who knows middle europe only from pictures on the internet. I laughed out loud when they entered a bar in the small swiss mountain town and there was Hard Rock playing and 10 Punk Kids hanging out with some hardcore Bikers. Truly, the rural swiss alps are riddled with crime and gangs roaming the streets.

What needs to be mentioned though is that the camera work and scene composition was actually very good, unfortunately a bad script is a bad script and good stylisation didnt save the movie for me.

If anyone can tell me what that stupid final scene was supposed to mean I would be thankful.