A Cure for Wellness

Year of Release:  2016

Director:  Gore Verbinski

Screenplay:  Justin Haythe, from a story by Gore Verbinski and Justin Haythe

Starring:  Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth

Running Time:  146 minutes

Genre:  Horror, drama

Lockhart (DeHaan), an ambitious young executive at a New York financial services institution, is assigned to retrieve the company's CEO from a remote "wellness centre" somewhere in the Swiss Alps.  When Lockhart arrives he soon discovers that the centre's grotesque treatments hide a disturbing secret.

Loosely inspired by the Thomas Mann novel The Magic Mountain, this is an impressively mounted, handsome film, stylishly made, with an intriguing mystery.  There are also some impressive performances such as Jason Isaacs as the sinister head of the institution and Mia Goth as the strange, otherworldly girl who lives in the institute.  However the film is overly long with a running time of almost two and half hours, and there are some gaping plot holes.  Also the lead character, as played by Dane DeHaan, is so obnoxious it's really hard to care what happens to him.  It starts out as an elegant "elevated horror" film (basically horror for people who look down on horror films), but moves into full on gothic horror by the end.  Despite the sedate pace, the film boasts some genuinely horrific moments of body horror, including a genuinely nightmarish dental scene.  There are very obvious parallels to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), and Phantom of the Opera and even to bizarre sixties TV series The Prisoner (1967-1968).  It won't be too everyone's tastes, but if you have the patience and stomach for it, it is intriguing and beautiful enough not to feel like a waste of time.

    Dane DeHaan in A Cure for Wellness