A Cure for Wellness

The film builds up and escalates quite well, but after a while, you realize it's been building up for too long. Verbinski probably realized that too, hence he inserts drastic, often really gruesome scenes into the film A Cure for Wellness, which appropriately affect you. Especially those dental scenes are exceptionally well executed and extremely gruesome. And then there are the eels... Good scenes, nice atmosphere, but without really managing to captivate you as much as you might expect. I didn’t like the ending. (05/08/2017)

Shutter Island 2 – under the influence. Verbinski is a painter, his artistic eye for long takes and visually arresting stylisation is very satisfying for fans of the form. For the first half at least, he also manages to expertly build tension and a sense of something slightly bizarre beyond reality and completely unpredictable. Unfortunately, the surrealism is a bit too much, and in the hands of unimaginative screenwriters is bound to end up in an out-of-place fiasco. Scorsese also had amazing character psychology and a fantastic twist, which is lacking here. (13/06/2017)

Whoever gave Verbinsky the money he needed to make A Cure for Wellness look so beautiful must be insane. But the insanity doesn’t end there – and will naturally disappoint anyone incapable of leaving behind the expectations of an intelligent and ambitious future genre classic (which is already made clear at least in the first half hour). On the other hand, I think that there hasn’t been anyone in history who has shot so well, and with such budget, a thoroughbred Gothic horror script out of Hammer. The core idea is alright and it’s elaborated with some sophistication, considering the standards of the sub-genre (i.e. silly, but in a cute rather than annoying way). The main problem is unfortunately the length, and here I agree with several of the more critical reviewers. The beginning is excellent, it manages to arouse the curiosity of the viewer, it’s mysterious and disturbing. The climax is also great, the WTF moments come one after another in such way that at times I wasn’t sure that I was seeing what I was seeing. Jason Isaacs plays Christopher Lee in his best years, and wonderfully at that (but who among today’s moviegoers will appreciate it?). Unfortunately, for more than one hour in the middle, Verbinsky stretches things too much and the film wouldn’t be hurt by a significant cut in its run. If everything between the first and last half hours was condensed to about half the time, it would be perfect, because I am really happy that something like this exists. (17/02/2017)

Visually, this movie is an absolute and pure delicacy. The story is a little weaker, though. The problem is that the beginning gets off to a great start. I don’t mind its similarity to Shutter Island at all. On the contrary, I am extremely excited about the small Swiss village and the castle above it. It creates an absolutely perfect atmosphere, and finally, somebody wasn’t afraid to portray the Swiss as a bunch of bums you could compare to immigrants coming from the most remote street of Bucharest. It holds the great atmosphere for the full hour and a half, the actors are also trying, and it all approaches the conclusion where it will certainly climax. But here it is quite clear that it will either be very good or very bad. Well, and it became a pure phantasmagoria. However, after watching this, I had about a half-hour-long free slot to think whether it bothered me in the end or not and I finally decided that thanks to the fact that Gore Verbinski wasn’t afraid to do a mysterious thriller it deserved the fourth star. There aren’t many such films even though they are incredibly gripping. And with the visuals he conjured up? I would be dumb to go lower. (11/07/2017)

This horror movie, A Cure for Wellness uses a carefully constructed atmosphere to get under your skin. However, as the story moves into the second half, it begins to lose a little of its initial charm, shrouded in sinister mystery. Nevertheless, I was not bored at all, on the contrary, the plot absolutely absorbed me. In addition, I was absolutely captivated by the beautiful mountain locations where the filming took place. Personally, however, I would have liked a more sophisticated solution to the mystery. (75%) (10/12/2022)