You see, what American moviegoers really want is a two-and-a-half-hour Dane DeHaan arty Euro-horror about incest, rape, dental surgery and leeches — said no one, ever.
And yet, here comes “A Cure for Wellness.”
A mad mix of literary pretension, gross perversion, grotesque violence and half-remembered better films, the movie is, inarguably, stylish. The way a road apple on a sterling-silver platter is stylish.
But that doesn’t justify making us stare at it for 146 minutes.
It also doesn’t justify a twisted film that crassly re-purposes Holocaust imagery, or exploits horrors like child rape, to try to power up a picture that’s basically a piece of mad-doctor schlock.
The long-winded plot has a big-shot finance guy refusing to return from his Swiss spa retreat. The corrupt firm he left behind is falling to pieces without him, so they dispatch a sneering little corporate lackey to bring him back – by force, if necessary.
But when the little Wall Street weasel gets to the spa he discovers it isn’t about people getting better, it’s about people getting weirder. And not only does his old boss refuse to leave – soon the little tycoon-in-training finds out he’s not allowed to, either.
Director Gore Verbinski got his start in commercials and music videos, and earned his Hollywood cred by churning out “The Ring,” three “Pirates of the Caribbean” money-makers, and the charmingly odd “Rango” – which partly explains this film’s eye-catching look, and mostly explains why someone trusted him with its budget.
And it does look good. The color is deliberately, drastically de-saturated – everything in shades of white, gray and pale green. The film is full of huge, interestingly framed closeups, terrors that lurk just out of the frame and unnerving edits.
But – as he proved on his last movie, the misbegotten “The Lone Ranger” – Verbinski is an easily distracted storyteller, and a director with little sense of tone or pace. “A Cure for Wellness” ranges from preening snobbery (a don’t-blink reference to Thomas Mann) to queasy exploitation. It ends at least three separate times.
It’s not helped by its cast, either. Jason Isaacs, who has been playing villains for decades, slips into the role of the spa’s shadowy director and wisely never goes for camp. But few actors are as unsympathetic as the perpetually pubescent Dane DeHaan, who plays our reluctant hero, and as the heroine, the properly named Mia Goth looks like an Addams Family cousin even Fester would disown.
Verbinski is such a confident visualist the film is still interesting to watch (even if what the visuals are surrounding is nonsense). The steampunk medical devices, the damp and cavernous hallways, the slightly addled spa patients all dressed in white – all add up to a deliberately disconcerting experience.
But there are also too many self-consciously outre touches – a shot reflected in the eye of a stuffed animal, ominously dripping faucets, a “Rosemary’s Baby” style lullaby on the soundtrack. Pretty soon you realize this isn’t an icily existential horror movie. It just something from someone who’s seen a lot of icily existential horror movies. Better ones.
And in the end it not only turns into a simple, gory monster flick, but one featuring a particularly gruesome scene of forced bondage and sexual assault. So yes, give the movie that much – at least, after more than two hours, it earns its title. It is, indeed, “A Cure for Wellnesss.” Because it’s finally, simply, desperately sick.
Ratings note: The film contains sexual abuse, gore, violence, nudity and strong language.
‘A Cure for Wellness’ (R) Fox Searchlight (146 min.) Directed by Gore Verbinski. With Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth. ONE AND A HALF STARS
Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
