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A Cure for Wellness (2016)
  
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Directed
by:
Gore Verbinski |
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COUNTRY
USA/Germany |
GENRE
Thriller/Mystery |
NORWEGIAN TITLE
A
Cure for Wellness |
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RUNNING
TIME
146 minutes |
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Produced
by:
Arnon Milchan
Gore Verbinski
David Crockett |
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Written by:
Justin Hayte |
Review
As
with so many of Gore Verbinski's films, A Cure for Wellness has an
immediate mystic and seductive quality that makes you want to love
it. His compositions and use of locations are second to none, and
like he did in his debut
Mouse Hunt, he romanticizes early 20th-century architecture, style and way of life. This time the setting
is a classic mountainside sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, complete with once
cutting-edge and experimental (now arguably outdated) medical
equipment and methods, to which wealthy clients from the business
world once again come flocking. Our protagonist is an unscrupulous,
up-and-coming finance man named Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) who is sent
there to retrieve the company's CEO (Harry Groener), whom his peers
believe to have become a health fanatic after leaving the
corporation
behind. Needless to say, things aren't quite what they seem to be at
the sanatorium, and Verbinski chases us around the premises along
with Lockhart to try to decipher it all. Although the basic premise
is good and Verbinski creates several moments of enticing, classy
filmmaking, it all starts to dwindle and lose its effectiveness as
the director starts to procrastinate. The unraveling is clever, but
not so clever that the film can afford this amount of sloppiness
in getting to the conclusion. The stylish shots and compositions
never taper off, though. The acting is mostly average, although DeHaan excels
in the more physical segments and Mia Goth has a delicate quality
that fits her part perfectly.
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