As the increasingly overstuffed Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and the infamously excessive box office bomb The Lone Ranger proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, indulging Gore Verbinski doesn’t always reap the greatest of rewards, something proven yet again when A Cure for Wellness cratered at the box office back in early 2017.
Even though it only cost a fraction of his Disney-backed blockbusters at $40 million, the overlong and overwrought psychological chiller could only limp towards $26 million in ticket sales. 146 minutes was unnecessary to the point of outright boredom, with the story dragging on and on, seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing Verbinski to showcase some admittedly sumptuous visuals.
In an incredibly rare turn of events, critics and audiences found themselves in 100 percent agreements on the underwhelming nature of the film, given that it boasts identical Rotten Tomatoes scores of 42 percent from both parties, a phenomenon that you don’t encounter all that often.
However, despite the off-putting length of the harrowing fable, Prime Video subscribers have opted to give A Cure for Wellness another chance, with FlixPatrol revealing that it’s one of the top-viewed titles on the platform this week. Dane DeHaan’s stockbroker heads off to a remote retreat to liberate his company’s CEO, only to be drawn into a facility full of secrets, lies, and untold terrors, all of which take far too long to reveal themselves.
There’s a lot to like in short busts, but they’re too few and far between in a skin-crawling terror that overextends itself to almost two and a half hours.
