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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 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 suffers a fatal heart attack. Lockhart, an ambitious young executive, takes his place and is sent by the company board members to retrieve the company's CEO, Roland Pembroke, from an idyllic, but mysterious, "wellness center" at a remote location in the Swiss Alps. This retrieval is prompted by a troubling letter from a seemingly much changed Pembroke, whom they need to sign off on an imminent company merger. There is also an ongoing investigation into criminal business deals, which several partners hope to pin on Pembroke upon his return. Arriving at the spa, Lockhart is met with some resistance by the staff, particularly Dr. Heinreich Volmer, in his attempts to speak with Pembroke. He eventually succeeds in getting through to him, but not before a car crash forces him to recover at the center with a broken leg.

In his time at the spa, Lockhart meets a mysterious young girl named Hannah, who, like Volmer, 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 that 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 his wife's infertility. He succeeded, but finding the bodies of his victims, the peasants rose up and burned the castle down. The baron's pregnant sister was captured by the peasants. The baby was then cut from her womb before she was burned. Although they tossed the baby into the local aqueduct, it somehow survived.

Lockhart investigates his suspicions and discovers the transfusion wing of the spa is a front for macabre medical experiments. Eels, whose lives can be vastly extended by the properties in the aqeduct's water that is toxic to humans, are used. The doctor filters the eels through the bodies of patients at the retreat, to produce the "cure", which Volmer, Hannah and others are ingesting. Lockhart is captured by Volmer, who is actually the centuries-old baron, surviving off the cure, and Lockhart is subjected to nightmarish treatments that warp his mind like Pembroke. Lockhart begins writing a letter to his employer saying that he intends to remain at the spa, but has a moment of clarity and realizes that his leg was never actually broken. He rips off the cast and goes in search of Hannah.

Around this time, Hannah has her first menstrual cycle and Volmer celebrates with an elaborate ball. 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 Hannah is his daughter. During the ensuing fight, Volmer's face is revealed to be a mask that hides hideous burns. Lockhart sets Volmer and the castle on fire, but is overpowered. Hannah saves him by killing Volmer, lodging a shovel in his head. He then falls into a pool and is eaten by his carnivorous 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. Suspecting they plan to pin all corporate wrongdoings on him, he instead chooses to run away with Hannah.

Cast

2
  • Dane DeHaan as Lockhart
    • Douglas Hamilton as 9-year old Lockhart
  • Jason Isaacs as Dr. Heinreich Volmer
  • Mia Goth as Hannah
  • Adrian Schiller as Deputy Director
  • Celia Imrie as Victoria Watkins
  • Ashok Mandanna as Ron Nair
  • Harry Groener as Pembroke
  • Godehard Giese as Prim Technician
  • Tomas Norström as Frank Hill
  • 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]

A Cure for Wellness is an American-German co-production.[4] On October 7, 2014, it was announced that Gore Verbinski would direct the film, scripted by Justin Haythe, for New Regency Pictures.[5] On April 8, 2015, Dane DeHaan and Mia Goth were cast in the film, with DeHaan playing an employee sent to rescue his boss from a European "wellness spa," and Goth co-starring as a patient at the facility.[6] 20th Century Fox handles the distribution rights, while Verbinski produced the film through his Blind Wink Productions.[6] Jason Isaacs was added to the cast on June 2, 2015, to play the villainous role of the facility's director, who has dark designs on one of his patients.[7]

Principal photography for the film began on June 22, 2015[8] and took place mainly at Babelsberg Studio (co-producer) in Potsdam, Germany.[9][10] 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.[11] 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.[12][13]

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] 20th Century Fox worked with a fake news publisher to create five Web sites, with names such as the "Houston Leader," which were designed to imitate traditional online news sources. The Web sites published articles featuring false information about prominent public figures (e.g., Lady Gaga and President Donald J. Trump) and controversial topics of public interest (e.g., mental health and vaccinations) and were shared widely via Facebook. In mid-February 2017, it was discovered (to sharp public criticism) that 20th Century Fox had orchestrated the creation of these fake news publications in an effort to publicize A Cure for Wellness, by including plot references to the film and promotional hashtags such as #cureforwellness in the subject articles.[15]

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.[16][17] 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.[18]

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).[19]

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.[20][21] Critics have noted the film's lovecraftian elements.[22][23] On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 41% based on 157 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. 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."[24] 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".[25] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[26]

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."[21]

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. ^ Blaney, Martin (May 8, 2015). "World of Locations: Germany". Screen International. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  5. ^ Fleming Jr, Mike (October 7, 2014). "Steve Carell And Gore Verbinski Team For Paranoid Thriller At New Regency". deadline.com. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  6. ^ a b 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.
  7. ^ Kit, Borys (June 2, 2015). "Jason Isaacs to Play Villain in Gore Verbinski's Supernatural Horror Movie (Exclusive)". hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  8. ^ "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.
  9. ^ Studio Babelsberg – references: „A Cure For Wellness“ www.studiobabelsberg.com, February 24, 2017
  10. ^ PNN: „A Cure For Wellness“ – Auftrag mit Gruselfaktor für Babelsberger Kulissenbauer www.pnn.de, February 22, 2017
  11. ^ 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)
  12. ^ "DFFF Aktuell" (in German). Deutscher Filmförderfonds. Retrieved April 8, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ "Ministerpräsident Woidke am Set des Films "A Cure for Wellness"" (in German). Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. August 19, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (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. ^ "Matt Damon's 'Great Wall' poised for soft U.S. opening against 'Lego Batman' and 'Fifty Shades'". Los Angeles Times.
  17. ^ "Moviegoers Likely To Spend Less George Washingtons Over Presidents Day Weekend: Box Office Preview". Deadline.com.
  18. ^ "Holdovers Reign Over Holiday Weekend, But Why Did The New Releases Tank?: Presidents' Day B.O." Deadline.com.
  19. ^ "Biggest Theater Drops". Box Office Mojo.
  20. ^ Bumbray, Chris. "Review: A Cure for Wellness". JoBlo. JoBlo Media Inc. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  21. ^ 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.
  22. ^ Sims, David. "'A Cure for Wellness' Is a Malevolent Thrill Ride, With Eels". Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  23. ^ "The 'A Cure For Wellness' Trailer is a Lovecraftian Nightmare - Bloody Disgusting!". 20 December 2016. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  24. ^ "A Cure for Wellness (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
  25. ^ "A Cure for Wellness reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  26. ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
  27. ^ Brody, Richard (February 16, 2017). "Tasteless Intricacies of "A Cure for Wellness"". Retrieved February 21, 2017.
  28. ^ 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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