MOVIE REVIEW – A sanitarium is often a scary place in movies, and who else, then Gore Verbinski, the director of The Ring can bring a true level dread into a place which was made for our health in the first place. The trailers promised artistic, yet truly fearsome visuals and a clever story, let’s see, what Verbinksi prepared for us…

Dane DeHaan stars as Lockhart, a hungry young executive who’s sent on a “rescue mission” to the Swiss Alps. His firm is facing a crisis that could erase their pending merger, and only its CEO (Pembroke, played by Harry Groener) can make things right. There’s just one problem – he refuses to leave the idyllic “wellness center” Lockhart arrives at. Beautiful architecture and breathtaking views release older residents from their daily stresses, but Lockhart has no time for Pembroke’s “scheduled treatments.” Director Volmer (Jason Isaacs) says that every patient can leave, so Lockhart doesn’t fret. Then he wakes up with a broken leg, under Volmer’s suggested care. Lockhart has every intention of leaving with Pembroke – it’s just too bad that Volmer has other plans.

A familiar theme

While the premise of the story seems rather original, in fact, there are quite a few movies and video games with the theme of a gory sanitarium, where horrific things are happening and where the main protagonist is often imprisoned.

One of the best movies using this theme was Shock Therapy (Traitement de Choc): a French movie with Alain Delon and Annie Girardot, made in 1972. Of course, there’s also Shutter Island from Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio and let’s not forget The Road to Wellville from Alan Parker  either. Unfortunately, all three movies surpass A Cure for Wellness regarding quality.

In the world of video games, there’s also the chilling horror-adventure game, Sanitarium which story is a bit similar as well.

Too long for its own good

The aforementioned French movie: Shock Therapy was about 1:31 long and as far as story complexity goes it told a similar story, yet Cure of Wellness was almost one hour longer, and I didn’t feel it was either necessary or justified. The story for A Cure of Wellness is told in a slow, ponderous way, with some unnecessary or overly long scenes. I most certainly felt that the movie could get away with Shock Therapy’s 1:30

Besides being too long – while the story is interesting in the beginning, it gets more and more stupid as the mystery unravels. Every sanitarium-type movie has a point, a question: “why?” and all threre movies I mention eariler has a clever, a funny, or truly shocking answer to that question. The “point”, the final solution in Justin Haythe’s script is utterly disappointing and destroys everything which was so smartly construced before.

Shame

It’s just a pity, because A Cure for Wellness is a beautifully shot film full of interesting ideas.  It’s a breathtaking experience aesthetically, and there’s no better time for a movie that questions the human costs of an obsession with capitalism and personal success.

DeHaan is also perfectly cast as the pasty-faced, sweaty, smart but physically over-matched Young Man of the City utterly out of his element in this place where the “sick” are handled with rough, muscular Germanic efficiency. DeHaan keeps the guy interesting even as he seems unable to string his investigations and suspicions into a workable course of action.

Unfortunately, all this visual splendor and decent acting is gradually left behind by the inane story, and utterly stupid last 20 minutes.

Shame, indeed…

-BadSector-