A pretty short review for you all this week. Thought it would be better than nothing. Plus I had high expectations for this film as well.
A Cure for Wellness is a 2016 horror/thriller film directed by Gore Verbinski. 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.
What a strange movie, I must say. I walked into it knowing that it wasn’t going to be a standard horror/thriller film, but boy did I walk out disappointed. I will try as hard as I can to keep this as spoiler free as I can, but there are just some parts to this film I must talk about. Now before I start bashing this film, I did want to explain what I did like about this film. Yes, there were actually some really good parts to this film.. as odd as that may sound.
So what did I like about this film? Well the cinematography was phenomenal. The shots the camera gets are for the most part breathtaking. One of the opening scenes on the train just proves this point, although it was already shown in the trailer. But other little things, like when they are driving throughout the Swiss Alps make this film sort of enjoyable from a cinematic prospective.
But although I had high praise for this film’s cinematography, there was a lot wrong with this film; and I mean a lot. To start things off, the acting was just sub-par. Although I am a big fan of Mr. Dane Dehaan, he just didn’t steal the spotlight with this film. If anyone did a good job in this film it would of had to have been Mia Goth. She was great, but one great performance doesn’t makeup for a multitude of sub-par performances. Sure I liked the cast of this film, but it just didn’t have any energy to it; mostly coming from Dehaan.
Another low point in the film is its pacing, and boy is it bad. The film runs at around 146 minutes, which is about 100 minutes too long. Yes, this film has to be one of the most boring films I have seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey. While the story is trying to put things together, the audience misses the most important parts due to its pacing and lack of emphasis on important information. Although I want to blame this movie’s story, it really wasn’t the story that was the main issue. To be honest, there was a great story in this film somewhere, it just took too long for it to make any real progress. It’s actually really sad, and suffers the same fate as Assassin’s Creed.
There really isn’t much more I can say about this film other than it being pretty bad, and extremely confusing. I spent most of the time trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the person I went with. And even she fell asleep during the film. So in the end I decided to give A Cure for Wellness a “Bad” on theVade Review Bar. Its sub-par acting, boring pacing, and decent overall story and great cinematography make up for just another bust at the box office.
