A Cure for Wellness

Gore Verbinski on drugs? A third clone of Shutter Island, more confused than Stonehearst Asylum and bizarrely mixed with The Abominable Dr. Phibes? I understand the intention to create a B-movie guilty pleasure with a lavish budget. Mysteriousness and unpredictability work at least for the first half of the movie. But it all turns ridiculous in the end. Dane DeHaan was certainly looking forward to his first big lead role, but he won’t break through with this one. Interesting posters, an unclear target audience, all resulting in a fiasco. I want a more intimate version of this from Roman Polanski without CGI. (02/20/2017)

Gore Verbinski is going back to horror, the genre that made him famous (The Ring), after spending some time with blockbusters (Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lone Ranger) and his new film is one of the biggest surprises for me this year. A Cure for Wellness has a very attractive theme set in a sanatorium in the beautiful Swiss Alps, an aspiring protagonist, Dan de Haan, who, although rather unlikeable, gave a solid performance, and intelligent dialogue, excellent camerawork – you can see that Verbinsky is more or less into unconventional camera shots, the crash with a deer is one of the best car and animal collisions ever filmed. Overall, there are very solidly directed horror scenes that will please any fan. Nothing is pretty to look at, but at the same time I got goosebumps and was fascinated. For some, the the two and a half hour running time may be a drawback, but for me it was a very entertaining affair that kept me on my toes throughout. A great mystery satisfaction that will be one of the best this year. In terms of visuals, A Cure for Wellness is perhaps one of the best made mystery horror dramas I've ever had the opportunity to see. 85%. (06/06/2017)

Shutter Island 2 – under the influence. Verbinski is a painter, his artistic eye for long takes and visually arresting stylisation is very satisfying for fans of the form. For the first half at least, he also manages to expertly build tension and a sense of something slightly bizarre beyond reality and completely unpredictable. Unfortunately, the surrealism is a bit too much, and in the hands of unimaginative screenwriters is bound to end up in an out-of-place fiasco. Scorsese also had amazing character psychology and a fantastic twist, which is lacking here. (06/13/2017)

It's delightfully filmed weirdness - after Crimson Peak, another horror film that's not very usual for the contemporary viewer (even the genre classification here doesn't know how to deal with it :)), but which perfectly had me in the palm of its hand. First of all, it was able to surprise me with something every now and then, which was probably the best of all. Priessnitz never dreamed of such a hydrotherapy, and I, who was so bored by Shutter Island, probably didn't dream of such a film either. (02/22/2017)

The film builds up and escalates quite well, but after a while, you realize it's been building up for too long. Verbinski probably realized that too, hence he inserts drastic, often really gruesome scenes into the film A Cure for Wellness, which appropriately affect you. Especially those dental scenes are exceptionally well executed and extremely gruesome. And then there are the eels... Good scenes, nice atmosphere, but without really managing to captivate you as much as you might expect. I didn’t like the ending. (08/05/2017)