Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness (2016) is a gorgeously deranged descent into madness—part gothic fairy tale, part psychological horror, and part cautionary fable about modern ambition and the price of chasing eternal youth. Though polarizing for its audacious length and bizarre narrative turns, this film has quietly earned a cult following for its hypnotic atmosphere and strikingly twisted vision.
The story follows Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), an ambitious, morally slippery young executive sent by his ruthless corporation to retrieve the company’s CEO from a mysterious wellness spa nestled in the remote Swiss Alps. What begins as a simple errand quickly transforms into a nightmarish rabbit hole as Lockhart uncovers unsettling secrets about the spa’s so-called “cure” and its unsettlingly serene patients.
Verbinski, best known for Pirates of the Caribbean and The Ring, turns A Cure for Wellness into a stunning, unsettling sensory experience. The film is drenched in eerie, old-world beauty—endless misty mountain vistas, shadowy corridors, and luxurious yet decaying bathhouses that feel frozen in time. Every frame looks like a baroque painting come to life, steeped in sickly greens and icy whites that hint at rot beneath the surface.
At the heart of this fever dream is DeHaan’s Lockhart—a man whose arrogance and cynicism slowly erode as he’s pulled deeper into the spa’s sinister web. His physical and mental unraveling is as fascinating as it is grotesque, especially as the film plunges into themes of inherited sin, obsession, and the horrifying extremes people will endure for the promise of purity and immortality.
Jason Isaacs is magnetic and chilling as Dr. Volmer, the spa’s enigmatic director whose unnervingly calm demeanor conceals monstrous intentions. And Mia Goth, ethereal and otherworldly, gives the film a ghostly anchor as Hannah, a strange, childlike young woman who seems untouched by the decay around her—until her true connection to the spa’s centuries-old horrors is revealed.
- A Cure for Wellness* isn’t shy about its nods to classics like Shutter Island, The Shining, and even German expressionism. It’s a film where plot logic sometimes gives way to dream logic, with grotesque body horror, disturbing medical procedures, and surreal hallucinations all blending into an atmosphere of inescapable dread. Some moments—like Lockhart’s tooth-drilling nightmare or the unsettling eel baths—lodge in your brain like a bad dream you can’t shake.
Though critics were divided on its bloated runtime and over-the-top finale, A Cure for Wellness has gained a reputation as an underrated modern gothic—a bold, beautifully crafted freak show that dares to be genuinely weird in an era of safe, formulaic horror. It’s a reminder that sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the monster in the shadows—it’s the promise that there’s something wrong inside you, and no cure on Earth can make you whole again.
