A Cure for Wellness

Director: Gore Verbinski
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 1.5

Businessman Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to a "health retreat" in the Swiss Alps to get a signature from his company's CEO (Harry Groener) to approve a corporate merger ... only Lockhart ends up a patient there (following a car accident) and he discovers some icky experiments being conducted by Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs) involving eels and incest (which is quite a combo). Shamelessly scrapes from a wide assortment of horror/exploitation movies and texts for its content - including Lovecraft, Von Trier's The Kingdom, Crichton's Coma, Seconds, Jean Rollin's movies, Marathon Man and so on - and then proceeds to strip them of their tension and drama - the result is mechanically presented and, after a while, irritating (DeHaan, despite always being recaptured and beaten to a pulp, manages to keep getting free in order to sneak around). As with Verbinski's Pirates movies (and The Lone Ranger), he hasn't shown he's exceptionally good at pacing his pictures....