Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to a remote wellness center in Swiss Alps (in Switzerland) to retrieve Mr. Pembroke, the CEO of his financial firm, so that the firm can seal a merger and find someone crazy to pin some security exchange violations on.   Lockhart finds it is easier said than done getting his boss out of the sanitarium that overlooks a village.   A car accident makes him a guest of the place while he becomes smitten with Hannah (Mia Goth) as he tries to unravel the mystery of the place (that uses purified water as part of the cure for the disease) mired by a dark past involving a Baron who was performing unethical medical experiments to cure his wife’s illness (a wife who was also his sister).    Lockhart starts to find out more pieces of the puzzle as he might not be able to trust Dr. Heinrich Volmer (Jason Isaacs) and there is more going on beneath the surface as he starts to see things (that might not be there).

 

A CURE FOR WELLNESS is a multi-layered classic.  It is a mystery, a love story, a psychological thriller, a story of first love, a story of finding yourself, and a story of mad science.   It also has a sanitarium, eels, incest, a dark past, and vivid imagery with a sweeping score.   Mia Goth is hauntingly beautiful while the European locales remind me of being stuck in a modern day Hammer Horror film.  If you like movies like THE NINTH GATE or the movies of Guillermo del Toro, you should check out this movie.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

A five minute deleted sequence cut from the movie

 

Three short Meditations shorts that talk about the various elements (Water, Air, and Earth) being a cure.

 

Three theatrical trailers (green band, red band, Asian International)

 

Previews for MORGAN, THE BELKO EXPERIMENT,

 

The movie in standard definition on DVD and code to download and/ or stream a digital HD copy of the movie too

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  A CURE FOR WELLNESS is an underwatched classic.  Hopefully, it will find the audience that didn’t discover it in theaters on blu-ray and DVD and digital since it is one of the best movies out this year.   It will at least be a cult classic, but hopefully it will be a classic that just isn’t seen by a few.  I do wish there was some actual making of material on the movie which the blu-ray sorely lacks.

 

This review is ©6-13-2017 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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