A Cure For Wellness Movie Review: Stunning Visuals But Clumsy Script Has Big Plot Holes That Raise More Questions Than It Can Answer

"A CURE FOR WELLNESS" will remind you of similarly themed films like "Shock Corridor", "Shutter Island", "Snake Pit" and even "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", where a lead character is trapped and stranded in a sanitarium where his sanity is eventually challenged. This one, though, is not set in a mental asylum but in a health spa in the Swiss Alps, shot at Germany's famous Hohenzollern Castle near Stuttgart.

The lead character is Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), an ambitious but crooked young executive who's accused of some corporate misdeed in a New York company. As comeuppance, he is ordered to get back their chief executive who's currently under treatment in the remote Volmer wellness center in Switzerland. He figures it will be a quick journey to the mountain spa, just fetch their CEO and then head back right away to New York.

But no such thing happens. He figures in a car crash involving a deer (spectacularly staged for the camera). It breaks his leg and he's confined against his will inside the spa where the inmates never leave once they're taken in. Soon, he is being submerged in baths inside tanks that are swarming with water snakes and strapped into dental chairs with his tooth being drilled without anesthesia ala-Dustin Hoffman in the thriller, "Marathon Man".


He also encounters a mysterious young patient with the mind of a child, Hannah (Mia Goth of "Nymphomaniac"), whose very existence harbors a deadly 200-year old deadly secret involving rape, murder and incest. Jason Isaacs plays the clinic's seemingly friendly but actually creepy head doctor, a sinister role that would have been played to perfection in the 60s version of a movie of this sort by the likes of Christopher Lee or Vincent Price. Mia and Jason do well in their respective roles but, sadly, DeHaan does not really come off convincingly as a sympathetic and personable leading man. We don't really get to care for his character.

The movie is directed by Gore Verbinski, who did the American version of the Japanese horror hit, "The Ring", three "Pirates of the Caribbean" blockbusters and the monumental flop that was "Lone Ranger". It offers lavish, very good visuals, with some some scenes stunningly staged, and an eerie production design that borrows freely from "Phantom of the Opera", "House of Wax" and the earlier Hammer Films versions of "Frankenstein" and "Dracula".

Unfortunately, its inadequate script is clumsily written, with plot holes that raise a lot more questions than it can dismally fail to answer. What is the significance of having that lengthy prologue showing someone having a heart attack and dying on the floor surrounded by computer screens that are all turned on? What is the importance of the frequent flashbacks showing the suicide of DeHaan's father and why did his mom tell him "You won't come back"?

And the movie just goes on and on interminably, with the film's excessive length running for an unjustified two hours and a half. A craftier director could have told the same story more swiftly in an hour and a half and a less boring manner. This movie is more of a nightmare than a real cure.
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News To Go February 22 2017

News To Go February 22 2017 Full Episode Replay
SHOW DESCRIPTION: News to Go is a newscast airing on GMA News TV. It premiered February 28, 2011 upon the first broadcast of GMA News TV, and airs early weekday mornings from 9:00 to 10:00 AM.It also aired worldwide via GMA News TV International.

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Not Another Network War: CAUTIVA/HANGGANG MAKITA KANG MULI & LA PROMESA/ PANGAKO SA 'YO on PANAMERICANA TV PERU

NOTE: We initially published this post on February 14. At first, I resisted the urge to focus on the ratings performance of the two teleseryes being shown in Peru (Cautiva/Hanggang Makita Kang Muli & La Promesa/Pangako Sa Yo) because I didn't want to turn the whole thing into a de facto Pinoy network wars abroad. But on second thought, I decided it best to highlight them because the teleserye is at a point where it is really being noticed as one of the main nodes of the diversified Asian telenovela products. People there really are not aware of the network war brouhahas in the Philippines. They are mostly interested in the product itself, and I thought focusing on how they respond to each teleserye will give us a feedback on what ticks there.

To a Pinoy, the news that an afternoon Kapuso teleserye starring lesser known actors trounching a primetime Kapamilya blockbuster starring the country's top young loveteam  in the ratings in another country is surprising. It's important to emphasize they are not shown against each other but right after the other.

I reposted this because it has a nice comment section on how sensible Pinoy teleserye fans are monitoring the Peruvian reaction to teleseryes. You can watch the teleseryes from 5:30-7:30 AM Manila time at the Panamericana website. They are shown one after the other from 4:30-6:30 PM Peruvian time.


February 14, PERU time (February 15 in the PHILIPPINES): this new teleserye opens on Peru's Panamericana TV.

This ushers in a new period of teleserye history in Latin America, where two teleseryes will be shown one after the other for the first time from 4:30- 6:30 PM. Cautiva from 4:30-5:30 while La Promesa is heating up from 5:30-6:30 PM.

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