Spending most of the past decade in blockbuster land, helming two “Pirates Of The Caribbean” movies and “The Lone Ranger,” director Gore Verbinski has used his opportunities outside branded entertainment to let his freak flag fly. “Rango” was a delightfully strange animated western led by a Johnny Depp-voiced chameleon, and now comes “A Cure For Wellness,” a richly designed, indulgently overlong horror/thriller that works very hard to construct a wildly weird world. Yet, whether by the limitations of studio filmmaking that, even with an R-rating, still only allows for genre boundaries to be pushed so far, or hesitation by the filmmakers to double down on the odder elements of the story, “A Cure For Wellness” is an exercise in watching a film continually stifle itself at its most compelling moments.
Working for a financial firm that’s almost as clinically strange as the wellness center he’ll eventually be sent to, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is a young executive on the rise, whose status has been confirmed by a new corner office. But Lockhart doesn’t have much time to bask in the glow of his achievements, as he’s summoned by the company’s board and tasked with retrieving CEO Roland Pembroke, whose visit to a Swiss heath spa has become permanent. Pembroke’s disappearance is given an extra layer of strangeness from a letter he’s penned to senior staff declaring that, essentially, the pursuit of capitalism has made them sick, but he’s found the cure. Or, as the Swiss institute’s driver Enrico (Ivo Nandi) will put it later on, “Wealthy people have wealthy problems.” None of this makes much of an impression on Lockhart at first. He’s cocky enough to believe he can land in Switzerland, get Pembroke out of the wellness center in twenty minutes, and have them back on a red-eye to New York City the same day. Of course, that’s not what happens.
Instead, a freak accident leaves Lockhart with a broken leg and an unexpected resident of the wellness center, situated in a former castle, on the outskirts of a remote Swiss village. There, he meets Volmer (Jason Isaacs, essentially reprising his role from “The OA” with a German accent), the facility’s head doctor, but Pembroke remains curiously out of sight. Lockhart also encounters Hannah (Mia Goth), a “special case” who has been living at the center for as long as she can remember. Otherwise, everything is just normal enough to escape suspicion, but it isn’t long until Lockhart starts discovering the nightmarish secrets hidden behind the scenes.
With gorgeous production design by five-time Oscar nominee Eve Stewart (“The Danish Girl,” “Les Miserables,” “The King’s Speech”) and crisp cinematography by Bojan Bazelli (“Pete’s Dragon,” “The Lone Ranger”) there isn’t a frame of “A Cure For Wellness” that Verbinski doesn’t fuss over. And yet, for a film that is clearly inspired by “The Shining,” “Rear Window,” and “The Devils,” Verbinski may display the fastidious filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, but his film never comes close to having any of the lurid fun of Ken Russell.
Far too often, “A Cure For Wellness” errs on taking this largely goofy story seriously, and frustratingly pulls back any time it brushes against narrative elements that might smudge its antiseptic storytelling. An entertaining interlude involving a gang of young German punks and a grimly hilarious sequence highlighting the sexual repression among Volmer’s staff are two brief moments when it actually looks like the film might really start going for broke. But screenwriter Justin Haythe, who developed the story with Verbinski, remains focused on Lockhart’s Hardy Boys style snooping which becomes increasingly repetitive and dull as the film’s 146-minute run time drags on.
Indeed, in addition to blunting its more colorful narrative threads, “A Cure For Wellness” is also saddled with a motivation problem for its protagonist: for a good chunk of picture, Lockhart’s main reason for finding Pembroke and fleeing the health spa is driven entirely by his need to help close a deal back home. He’s not the most relatable of characters and there’s little reason to care about whether he succeeds or not. And when it’s time for Lockhart to start fighting for his very survival, the film is further weighed down by a long backstory involving the history of the castle and the bloodline of ancient nobility that leads to a twist that any audience member paying attention will figure out long before Lockhart does. And any hope that the film will truly let loose at this turning point is snuffed out by a third act that is blandly conventional, right when it should be fully unhinged.
“A Cure For Wellness” is certainly stylish, and Verbinski does a good job at striking the tone that conveys madness being masked behind the facade of normalcy. But the movie has little to say about its characters, nor any kind of thematic undercurrent to give Lockhart’s journey to Switzerland any kind of message other than the blind pursuit of profit is an empty endeavor. But it’s a hollow takeaway, from an even more hollow movie. [C-]