A Cure For Wellness

For some films, the journey is sometimes better than the destination and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
A Cure for Wellness is a very fine film with some unsettling visuals and splendid photography with a weak payoff, but a payoff that is more than compensated for by what preceded it.It could be said of some films that the setting is a character all its own, here, the exterior architecture of the institute is much too pleasant looking to be foreboding. But there are few movies I can think of however, where the color and lighting scheme serve their purpose well enough to feel like characters.The lack of the kind of creepiness factor that in some movies comes as the result of a spooky building like a haunted house, is more than compensated for by the lighting of the interior of the institute and a color scheme with bleak white interiors punctuated with sickly yellow rooms, in shades that run the gamut of jaundiced skin and old dried bones. In some places, the pale color scheme is broken up by muted darker colors of the kind that one finds in civil service buildings in rooms and hallways usually hidden from public view. The kind of colors applied in a way that makes employees feel trapped in their careers.The color scheme sells the idea of sterile cleanliness while that very same cleanliness winds up feeling oppressive due to the early 1900s style furnishings and staff uniforms. While the bowels of the institute are cave-like and as in many horror films, are a metaphorical stand in for the depths of hell, at this point the familiarity of such settings in films strips them of any sense of foreboding and as such, it is far less unsettling than the rest of the institution.All of the acting is muted, but I hasten to add that this does not mean that the acting is wooden, far from it. The impression I got was that of the patients either trapped by their fates, numb with a sense of content complacency or possessed of a cult-like contentment. In public view, the staff seems to have settled into a practiced, but conscientious routine, with occasional lapses of crude behavior such as masturbation and assaulting a helpless patient. With the staff, there is enough there to convey that these are flawed beings not as self-controlled as the administrators, but without the overkill some filmmakers find necessary to exhibit in a tepid attempt to gin up any sense of ominousness.Gore Verbinski tosses in a local town reliant on the institute economically, but for one incident involving a violent young man, he stops short of turning the town into a horror film cliché where the locals are sinister. Though there is some sense of that, the overall impression is that the town residents are all too aware that the vitality of the town such as it is, is due to the success of the institute.I don’t know that I’d call A Cure for Wellness a horror film. In fact, A Cure for Wellness makes a compelling case for creating a different classification for films that are creepy and unsettling and yet fall short of full blown horror.The film’s climax is the weakest point of A Cure for Wellness for two reasons. The first reason is the final conflict that while short, as these scenes go, still feels deliberately drawn out. The second, is the reliance on the kind of music that typifies conflict in these types of film, a bit too dramatic. This stands in contrast to the relative quiet music from the rest of the film as well as the music from an interspersed ballroom dance where the patients are clad in white ritual robes. Personally, I think the conflict scene music would have been better served by silence, thus allowing the licking flames, the rippling of water and the breaking of glass supply the soundtrack for a more visceral experience.Another alternative would have been to use the ballroom music throughout so as to disjointedly contrast the differing moods of the two scenes. This would help to convey the cluelessness of the dancers (all patients) which mirrors their reason for going to the institute and their actual experiences there. Or he could have used the kind of subdued music punctuating the rest of the film, or something discordant and disorienting.All an all however, A Cure for Wellness is a very excellent film if you give yourself permission to just enjoy the journey.I rented this film digitally and am seriously thinking of purchasing it as I suspect it’s one of those films that one appreciates more with each viewing..

Great movie!
One of the best movies I’ve seen very very umm creepy I guess is the word for it

It’s a good thriller movie.

als je van horror houd is deze film het bekijken waard

Fast delivery and very good 👍 👌 👏 😀 😎