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A Cure for Wellness

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A Cure for Wellness
Theatrical release poster
Directed byGore Verbinski
Screenplay byJustin Haythe
Story by
  • Justin Haythe
  • Gore Verbinski
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyBojan Bazelli
Edited by
  • Lance Pereira
  • Pete Beaudreau
Music byBenjamin Wallfisch
Production
companies
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • December 10, 2016 (2016-12-10) (Butt-Numb-A-Thon)
  • February 17, 2017 (2017-02-17) (United States)
Running time
146 minutes[1]
Countries
  • United States
  • Germany
LanguageEnglish
Budget$40 million[2]
Box office$26.6 million[2]

A Cure for Wellness is a 2016 science fiction psychological horror thriller film directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Justin Haythe. The film stars Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, and Mia Goth, and follows a young American executive who is sent to a mysterious rehabilitation center in the Swiss Alps. The film was released on February 17, 2017, by 20th Century Fox. The film received mixed reviews and was a box office bomb, grossing $26 million against its $40 million production budget.

Plot

At a large financial services firm in New York City, a man named Morris is working late when he finds a letter on his desk from Roland Pembroke, the company's CEO. Morris receives a market report before he can read the letter, but then suffers a fatal heart attack. The dead Morris is replaced by an ambitious young executive named Lockhart, who is sent by the company board to retrieve Pembroke from an idyllic, but mysterious "wellness center" at a remote location in the Swiss Alps. The board needs Pembroke to sign off on a company merger. In addition, the company is being investigated for criminal misconduct and several partners hope to pin the crimes on Pembroke.

Lockhart arrives at the spa, but he is met with resistance by the staff and Dr. Heinreich Volmer in attempting to speak with Pembroke. Lockhart leaves, but is involved in a car accident and awakens three days later at the center with his leg in a plaster cast. During his time at the spa, Lockhart meets a mysterious young girl named Hannah, who, among others, drinks a strange fluid kept in a cobalt bottle.

A patient named Victoria Watkins, as well as residents of the nearby town, tell Lockhart the story of the spa, which was built on the ruins of a castle, once owned by a baron 200 years ago. The baron desired an heir of pure blood, and married his sister. When the baron learned she was infertile, he began performing hellish experiments on the peasants in order to find a way to cure her infertility. He succeeded, but after finding the bodies of his victims, the peasants stormed the castle and set it on fire. The baron's pregnant sister was captured by the peasants and the baby was cut from her womb before she was burned. Although the peasants tossed the baby into the local aquifer, it somehow survived.

Lockhart attempts to escape the center, but finds that no one is allowed to leave. After gifting Hannah a ballerina figurine, Lockhart bikes into town with her help. Lockhart leaves Hannah in a bar and investigates the spa's patients. He finds out that the people of the spa suffer from dehydration, despite doing nothing but drink water from the aquifer. Meanwhile, Hannah, who has been kept at the spa her whole life, explores the bar and attracts the attention of the locals. Lockhart returns and gets into a fight with a man who was dancing with Hannah. He is rescued by Dr. Volmer, who has discovered that Lockhart had left the spa with Hannah.

Lockhart investigates his suspicions and discovers the transfusion wing of the spa is a front for macabre medical experiments. The water from the local aquifer possesses unique properties. It is very toxic to humans, but has life restoring properties to the eels living in the water. The baron had devised a process to filter the water through the bodies of humans, and distill the water into life giving essence. Volmer uses the patients as filters for this process. This "cure" is ingested by Volmer, Hannah, and others in order to gain vastly lengthened lifespans. Lockhart also realizes that his leg isn't broken, and that he is being forcefully kept by Dr. Volmer. Volmer then subjects Lockhart to nightmarish treatments that warp his mind, until he believes he is insane. Hannah realizes this change and gives Lockhart back his ballerina. The ballerina was given to Lockhart by his mother and helps break him out of his delirium.

Around this time, Hannah has her first menstrual cycle. Volmer marries Hannah. During the reception, he leads Hannah to a secret room built in the ruins of the castle, and prepares to rape her. Lockhart confronts Volmer and realizes that Volmer is the baron and Hannah is his daughter, who was the baby thrown in the well. They both had aged very slowly due to the "cure". In the ensuing fight, Volmer's face is revealed to be a mask that hides his hideous burns. Lockhart sets Volmer and the castle on fire, but is overpowered by Volmer. Hannah saves Lockhart by killing Volmer, who then falls into the aquifer and is eaten by the eels.

Lockhart and Hannah escape from the spa on a bicycle as fire engulfs the structure. On the road, Lockhart crashes into a car carrying his employers, who have arrived from New York to retrieve him and Pembroke. Lockhart is ordered into the car by the employers, who hope he will return to New York with them. Lockhart instead chooses to ride away with Hannah.

Cast

  • Dane DeHaan as Lockhart
    • Douglas Hamilton as 9-year old Lockhart
  • Jason Isaacs as Dr. Heinreich Volmer/Baron von Reichmerl
  • Mia Goth as Hannah von Reichmerl
  • Ivo Nandi as Enrico
  • Adrian Schiller as Deputy Director
  • Celia Imrie as Victoria Watkins
  • Ashok Mandanna as Ron Nair
  • Harry Groener as Roland Pembroke
  • Godehard Giese as Prim Technician
  • Tomas Norström as Frank Hill
  • Magnus Krepper as Pieter The Vet
  • Carl Lumbly as Wilson
  • Lisa Banes as Hollis
  • Tom Flynn as Humphrey
  • Johannes Krisch as Caretaker
  • Jason Babinsky as Carl
  • Angelina Häntsch as Volmer Institute Staff
  • Jeff Burrell as Funeral Director
  • Annette Lober as Volmer Institute Staff
  • Eric Todd as Josh
  • Christian Brauer as Technician
  • Thomas Richter as Water Trainer
  • Chris Huszar as Wedding Guest
  • Marko Buzin as Wedding Guest

Production

Beelitz-Heilstätten, pictured in 2005, served as a primary filming location.[3]

The film's two leads of Dane Dehaan and Mia Goth were announced in April 2015, [4] Jason Isaacs was added to the cast that June.[5]

Principal photography for the film began on June 22, 2015[6] and took place mainly at Babelsberg Studio (co-producer) in Potsdam, Germany.[7][8] Another great part of the film was shot at former royal Hohenzollern Castle, in the German municipality of Bisingen. The castle was closed to the public for filming from July 13 to July 24, 2015. Aside from Hohenzollern, parts of the film were also shot in Saxony-Anhalt and Zella-Mehlis, Germany.[9] An abandoned hospital in Beelitz-Heilstätten, Germany, served as a location for many of the hospital interiors.[3] The film received funds of €8.1 million, from the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), as well as €500,000 from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.[10][11]

Benjamin Wallfisch composed the score for the film, with music conductor Gavin Greenaway and performed by Chamber Orchestra of London in Abbey Road Studio.

The water tank scenes took two weeks to film. DeHaan and the director communicated through an intercom, and DeHaan wore a buoyancy and body-positioning waist harness connected with wires and an oxygen tank.[12]

The directors used a rubber drill in the scene where Dr. Brennan, the facility's dentist, drills through Mr. Lockhart's healthy tooth without anesthesia. According to DeHaan, he was genuinely nervous and his reaction was used in the filming. He stated that the scene had compositing but no outright CGI.[13] DeHaan filmed the scene while wearing a dental gag and strapped to the chair.[12]

In the car crash scene, DeHaan was placed into a harness inside a device described by Bryan Alexander of USA Today as being similar to a rotisserie before being tossed around. DeHaan stated that he experienced his sole filming injury there, in which his arm was dislocated from and then relocated into the socket in its shoulder.[12]

The German actors used in the scene in which Lockhart is assaulted by elderly people had no prior experience in film acting. Alexander wrote that this scene "wasn't as torturous as it appears."[12]

Release

The film premiered on December 10, 2016, at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon Film Festival in Austin, Texas, and was theatrically released in the United States on February 17, 2017, by 20th Century Fox, after initially being slated for September 23, 2016.[2]

The New York Times reported that 20th Century Fox created a group of fake news sites as part of a viral marketing campaign for A Cure for Wellness.[14][15]

The film trailer gained notoriety for showing a scene where Mia Goth was in a bathtub full of eels.[16][17]

Box office

A Cure for Wellness grossed $8.1 million in the United States and Canada and $18.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $26.5 million, against a production budget of $40 million.[2]

In the United States and Canada, the film opened alongside The Great Wall and Fist Fight, and was initially projected to gross $6–8 million from about 2,700 theaters in its opening weekend.[18][19] However, after making just $300,000 from Thursday night previews and $1.5 million on its first day, weekend projections were lowered to $4 million. It ended up debuting to $4.2 million, finishing 10th at the box office.[20]

In its third week of release the film was pulled from 97.8% of theaters (2,704 to 88) and grossed just $31,347, marking the second largest third-week theater drop in history (just ahead of the 2,659 theater decrease set by Live by Night two months prior).[21]

Critical response

A Cure for Wellness received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for its visuals, performances and ambition, but criticism for its length, plot and structure.[22][23] Critics have noted the film's Lovecraftian elements.[24][25] On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 42% based on 170 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A Cure for Wellness boasts a surfeit of visual style, but it's wasted on a derivative and predictable story whose twists, turns, and frights have all been more effectively dealt before."[26] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a score of 47 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[27] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[28]

Writing for TheWrap, Alonso Duralde praised the film's production design but criticized its narrative, saying: "While the movie is about people who are happy to remain removed from the world, not realizing that they are involved in something truly dreadful, many viewers will be all too willing to head for the exits."[23]

See also

References

  1. ^ "A Cure For Wellness (18)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d "A Cure for Wellness (2017)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 10, 2017.
  3. ^ a b Minton, Melissa (February 14, 2017). "How A Cure for Wellness Marries Horror and Beauty in Set Design". Architectural Digest. Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  4. ^ Ford, Rebecca; Kit, Borys (April 8, 2015). "Dane DeHaan, Mia Goth Joining Gore Verbinski's 'A Cure for Wellness' (Exclusive)". hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  5. ^ Kit, Borys (June 2, 2015). "Jason Isaacs to Play Villain in Gore Verbinski's Supernatural Horror Movie (Exclusive)". hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  6. ^ "On the Set for 6/22/15: Spielberg's 'The BFG' Wraps Along with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Sequel, Woody Harrelson Starts 'Wilson'". Ssninsider.com. Retrieved July 6, 2015.
  7. ^ Studio Babelsberg – references: „A Cure For Wellness“ www.studiobabelsberg.com, February 24, 2017
  8. ^ PNN: „A Cure For Wellness“ – Auftrag mit Gruselfaktor für Babelsberger Kulissenbauer www.pnn.de, February 22, 2017
  9. ^ Brenner, Julia. "Regisseur Gore Verbinski dreht Horrorfilm auf Burg Hohenzollern" (in German). Schwarzwälder Bote. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  10. ^ "DFFF Aktuell" [DFFF News] (in German). Deutscher Filmförderfonds. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
  11. ^ "Ministerpräsident Woidke am Set des Films "A Cure for Wellness"" [Minister-president Woidke at the set of "A Cure for Wellness"] (in German). Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. August 19, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
  12. ^ a b c d Alexander, Bryan (2017-02-16). "Why Dane DeHaan endured 'torture' for 'Cure for Wellness'". USA Today. Retrieved 2017-09-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  13. ^ Plante, Chris (2017-02-20). "The director of A Cure for Wellness on the unforgettable dental scene". The Verge. Retrieved 2017-09-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  14. ^ Stack, Liam (February 15, 2017). "20th Century Fox Used Fake News to Publicize 'A Cure for Wellness'". The New York Times. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  15. ^ David O. Klein & Joshua R. Wueller, Fake News: A Legal Perspective, Journal of Internet Law, Apr. 2017.
  16. ^ http://screenrant.com/cure-for-wellness-interview-mia-goth/
  17. ^ http://www.indiewire.com/2016/12/a-cure-for-wellness-trailer-mia-goth-dane-dehaan-gore-verbinski-1201757856/
  18. ^ "Matt Damon's 'Great Wall' poised for soft U.S. opening against 'Lego Batman' and 'Fifty Shades'". Los Angeles Times.
  19. ^ "Moviegoers Likely To Spend Less George Washingtons Over Presidents Day Weekend: Box Office Preview". Deadline.com.
  20. ^ "Holdovers Reign Over Holiday Weekend, But Why Did The New Releases Tank?: Presidents' Day B.O." Deadline.com.
  21. ^ "Biggest Theater Drops". Box Office Mojo.
  22. ^ Bumbray, Chris. "Review: A Cure for Wellness". JoBlo. JoBlo Media Inc. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  23. ^ a b Duralde, Alonso. "'A Cure for Wellness' Review: Sludgy Horror Film Mistakes Art Direction for Suspense". The Wrap. The Wrap News Inc. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
  24. ^ Sims, David. "'A Cure for Wellness' Is a Malevolent Thrill Ride, With Eels". Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  25. ^ "The 'A Cure For Wellness' Trailer is a Lovecraftian Nightmare - Bloody Disgusting!". 20 December 2016. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  26. ^ "A Cure for Wellness (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 16, 2017.
  27. ^ "A Cure for Wellness reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  28. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.[permanent dead link]
  29. ^ Brody, Richard (February 16, 2017). "Tasteless Intricacies of "A Cure for Wellness"". Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  30. ^ Angie, Han (December 21, 2016). "Interview: Gore Verbinski on Returning to Horror With "A Cure for Wellness"". Retrieved March 2, 2017. Gore Verbinski: Well, there's this book by Thomas Mann called The Magic Mountain that we're both fans of, and that book deals with people in a sanitarium in the Alps, clutching on to their sickness like a badge before the outbreak of World War I. We wanted to explore this sense of denial and say, well, what if that was a genre?
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