From visionary director, Gore Verbinski, A Cure for Wellness is a chilling and mind-bending psychological thriller. Embarking on the movie, Verbinski wanted to make a thriller with the depth, insight and power of classics in the genre that he admired, such as The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick), Don’t Look Now (1973, Nicolas Roeg) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968, Roman Polanski). The idea of a quick fix cure, together with society’s malaise and the obsession with perfect health were topics that fascinated Verbinski, whose films include the hugely successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and the Academy Award® winning animated film, Rango.
Dane DeHaan stars as Lockhart ,a driven Wall Street stockbroker sent by his firm to a remote alpine medical spa on a mission to retrieve the company’s CEO, Pembroke (Harry Groener), a patient at the spa, who has told his staff that he has no intention of returning to New York. Lockhart arrives at the tranquil sanitarium where the residents are supposedly receiving a miracle cure. In fact though, they seem to be getting sicker. As he investigates the dark and baffling secrets behind the spa, he meets a young woman, the hauntingly beautiful Hannah (Mia Goth), a patient herself. He also gets to know another patient, the eccentric Mrs. Watkins, played by Celia Imrie, who has done some detective work of her own. Soon, Lockhart is diagnosed with the same condition as the other patients by the institution’s director, the ominous Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs), and finds that he is trapped in the alpine retreat. Lockhart begins to lose his grip on reality and has to endure unimaginable ordeals during the course of his own ‘treatment’.
“We started exploring the notion of a health spa in the Alps, a wellness center that doesn’t actually make you well,” says Verbinski, “and it slowly evolved from there. It became pretty clear to us that this was going to be a genre piece, and we started playing around with the concept of inevitability. It’s the sense that there is a sickness, a sort of black spot on your x-ray that won’t go away!”
“It’s almost like a huge roller coaster, but the film is also asking a lot of important questions,” comments DeHaan. “At times, you are really feeling terrified. But if you are in a communal setting like a theater, you know you are safe and you know that what is happening on screen is completely removed from reality.”
A Cure For Wellness from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros. opens tomorrow.
