Review: A Cure For Wellness, starring Dane DeHaan and Mia Goth, puts the ‘ill’ in thriller

REVIEW: Set at a creepy medical clinic, A Cure For Wellness has enough gaping wounds to certainly put the “ill” in thriller.

A Cure For Wellness (MA15+)

Director: Gore Verbinski (The Lone Ranger)

Starring: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Celia Imrie, Adrian Schiller, Harry Groener.

Rating: **1/2

Diagnosis inconclusive

Set at a creepy medical clinic in the Swiss Alps, A Cure For Wellness has enough gaping wounds and bursting gizzards to certainly put the “ill” in thriller.

However, at a health-unconscious running time of 146 minutes and with scripting prone to bouts of short-term amnesia, some viewers won’t need a second opinion to write the whole thing off as a sick joke.

The movie is best described as a dread-riddled fever dream, filtered for familiarity’s sake through your favourite bits from Shutter Island and The Shining.

A Cure For Wellness is chilling ... and a bit sick. Picture: Supplied

Dane DeHaan stars as Lockhart, a wannabe wolf of Wall Street who has been sent to Europe to save his corporate overseers from a hostile merger.

Lockhart’s mission is to pull his boss out of an expensive hospital spa located high in the mountains, and get him back to New York ASAP.

However, a sinister head doctor named Volmer (Jason Isaacs) has other ideas, one of which is to incarcerate Lockhart as a patient and subject him to a program of the clinic’s most popular and unconventional treatments.

Dane DeHaan gets to the eye of the matter in unsettling mood piece, A Cure for Wellness. Picture: Supplied

(If you have a lasting phobia about being placed in extended proximity to bloodsucking eels, this is not the movie for you. There are long, angry and vicious members of the species slithering all over the most jolting sequences here.)

When viewed primarily as an unsettling mood piece, A Cure For Wellness administers just enough sharp shocks to the system to get the job done.

A Cure For Wellness needs a health check. Picture: Supplied

However, on the occasions where director Gore Verbinski absent-mindedly misplaces the exact mood he has in mind, the movie’s vital signs can plummet very quickly.

Originally published as Review: A Cure For Wellness, starring Dane DeHaan and Mia Goth, puts the ‘ill’ in thriller