Mr. Movie review: ‘A Cure for Wellness’ a cure for horror movie boredom

A Cure for Wellness sends Lockhart — an ambitious financial world climber — to a swank chalet in the Swiss Alps to retrieve the CEO of his company. The guy’s colleagues want him back to take the fall for company legal misdeeds.

If successful, Lockhart will be offered a nice promotion. The problem? First, the CEO won’t leave, and second, it seems he can’t leave. Once a person checks into the proverbial roach motel, there’s no checking out.

And Lockhart has checked in.

Getting out, getting the CEO and keeping his sanity is no easy task. All depends on a wisp of a girl who is the only person in the place with answers. However, the answers lead to questions as maze-like as the hotel’s interior.

A Cure for Wellness is billed as a mystery-thriller. In reality, it’s more of a horror movie, and is a breath of fresh air in an era of awful and anemic horror films. Ironically, a breath of fresh air is one of the things that attract the rich to the story’s posh hotel centerpiece. It’s where they go to forget, be cleansed of past sins and used for the purposes of Volmer, the film’s villain.

Pirates of the Caribbean’s Gore Verbinski writes and directs. Though it’s long and a bit slow in spots, Verbinski and his co-writer Justin Haythe have produced a thinking-person’s horror movie. It’s packed with terrific performances from Dane DeHaan (The Amazing Spider-Man 2). He shares star billing Harry Potter alum Jason Isaacs and Mia Goth (Nymphomaniac: Vol. II). All three are terrific, but it’s Isaacs who has the most fun as the steel-eyed, low-key, always-in-control bad guy.

Even more fun are the effects and the sets, and an attitude and plot that is a throwback to films of this genre produced in the 1950s and 1960s.

This story was originally published February 16, 2017 at 1:46 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: ‘A Cure for Wellness’ a cure for horror movie boredom."