A Cure for Wellness (Review)

If A Cure for Wellness was a cocktail it would be as follows

• 1 part Fight Club
• 2 parts The Ring
• and 2 parts Shutter Island

The result is a movie that is, as a whole, worse than the some of its parts, but in a unique way.

Escalators! Escalators!! Escalators!!! EEEEEELS

The film is, at its best moments, the closest thing modern audiences have to a Gothic capital-H Horror movie. In the same vein as Dracula and the original Frankenstein movies. But at its worst, its a sluggish (no pun intended), needlessly graphic, and just straight-up kooky movie.

It has a classic set up and a "seen it before" opening, followed by scene after scene of the film spoon feeding the audience information. But once it actually gets some room to stretch the movie has an interesting conclusion that is equal parts Grimm's fairy tale and Phantom of the Opera.

It's hard to describe this movie without comparing it to other films because it for the most part feels like a patchwork of things that came before....much like Frankenstein.

On paper I'd give the movie a 6/10 but it was almost perfect. What I mean to say is - imagine you're a movie and you're heading down the road to 10/10ville, and you decide to take a shortcut and end up in 6/10 territory.

Get what I'm saying?

Some great visuals from this flick.

A Cure for Wellness doesn't have "bad movie" running through its DNA. It just took a wrong turn.

The movie isn't weak because it was dumb, or had poor direction, or acting, or sets, or setting, or conclusion. No, those things made it great. In fact, I'd be curious to see a re-cut version of this film. Because, frankly, I think the editing is what killed this movie.

More than any other flaw the pacing of this movie is... confounding. It speeds up and slows down at least three times throughout the 2.5 hour run time and leaves the audience desperate for some consistency.

As for its similarities to the movie, Shutter Island, there are many, the most obvious is that the lead is convinced he's being gaslighted (gaslit?) by the wardens and doctors. Though due to the inferior pacing of A Cure for Wellness, it's way less believable.

Shutter Island also ends better. It wraps everything up in a satisfying little package. It's not "happy" per say, but the audience isn't left wanting. A Cure's ending is good, but it's too long of a movie for the whole of the project to feel great.

Side Note: There is WAY more body horror in A Cure for Wellness than there was in Shutter Island. People jump off bridges, have their eyeballs messed with, get eating alive, get eaten dead, have their teeth ripped out and drilled into, and there's even a part where a dude just slices open a cow for no reason. And A LOT of naked elderly people. It's weird.

Have you seen my brother Joshua? (joke nobody will get)

He even kind of looks like Leo DeCapcap

It's a movie worth seeing if you have the patience for it. It's a slog but a fun slog, like Thanksgiving. It's tons of work and not all of it is great but at the end you're left feeling weirdly satisfied. And at the very least you can tell your friends about the best parts tomorrow.