Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'A Cure for Wellness'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

For some time now, I have desperately been searching and waiting for a horror or thriller film that truly gets under my skin and leaves me completely and utterly disturbed, and so far my wait has continued, since the market now calls for these types of films to appeal to a broader audience, making it difficult to truly terrify us to our core.

But I still keep hope alive that the terror will return and said hope was fed and nourished at the possibility of seeing something exciting and different and disturbing when I first stumbled upon the trailer for A Cure for Wellness a few months ago. It promised quite the story, where it seemed a man sent on a simple task to retrieve a co-worker from an out of the way sanitarium/health spa would find himself locked into a world full of unsettling secrets and unspeakable horrors. 

So naturally, I simply had to see if by chance this was the film that I have been waiting for, which meant my baby sister (also an aficionado of the macabre) and I were in line Friday night to see what kind of mind warping treats we were in for and well...I'm sad to say that A Cure for Wellness is not only a downright disappointment, it is a bad, bad, film. The word 'mess' is the only one that consistently came to mind while I was watching this and quite frankly that's a shame because this film had quite the potential to be something special and revolutionary, if it weren't for the fact that this film simply has no clue what on earth it wants to be, or what classics from the past it wants to honor.

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At times this film evokes a sense of John Carpenter's ​In the Mouth of Madness, playing hard on the delicate boundaries of fantasy, reality and sanity, before switching gears to become a Gothic Horror piece that seems to be cluing into some Lovecraftian conspiracy that could perhaps endanger all of mankind and while one would think that such a blend of homages would provide the audience with a smart and layered motion picture, that's just simply not the case. This switch up serves as a diversionary tactic, one designed to throw the audience off the trail of an obvious plot reveal which completely and utterly removes the power of such tributes.  

But the issues with the story don't end there. In addition to being all over the place, a motion picture that tries desperately to be scary and unsettling, offers nothing of the sort. All the 'scares' are as cliché as they come, leaving the audience bored because it offers us nothing new in the slightest and to top it all off, the ultimate 'evil' plan that our villain in this film is working to accomplish, is so weird and outlandish and selfish and gross that it leaves the viewer conflicted. On one hand, you do want the main character, Lockhart, to save the day because of the ick factor, but on the other hand you're also raising an eyebrow as you try to process whether or not this strange little plot twist is actually unfolding before your eyes.

I guess that in a way, that is a win for the film, since the bad guy's plan does make you as uncomfortable as can be, but alas, it's the gross out factor that accomplishes this, as opposed to a good old fashioned scare, however, I don't want it sound as though every single moment of this film is downright awful. It does deserve some credit for delivering some stunning visuals and the acting is top notch through and through. But don't let those positives fool you. This is still a bad film, so rough in fact that the woman sitting to my right picked up her bag of popcorn and walked out in the middle of it. But, if anything...I did kill two hours of my night, so at the very least, A Cure for Wellness served as a cure for boredom. So...it's got that going for it...

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