Between early story tidbits and yesterday’s frighteningly dark viral promos for A Cure for Wellness – “we build, we buy, we consume, we wrap ourselves in the illusion of material success” – we knew going into today’s trailer reveal that Gore Verbinski was cooking up a very particular breed of psychological horror. And sure enough, 20th Century Fox and New Regency have peeled back the curtain on the director’s latest creative venture to unveil a disturbing trip into a remote European “wellness center.”
Headed up by Jason Isaacs’ manic, aristocratic director, it is Dane DeHaan that circles the mouth of madness as an ambitious young executive who agrees to partake in a range of archaic experiments. Whether it’s being submerged in a water tank teeming with eels or undergoing torturous tests, DeHaan’s lead is put through the wringer both physically and mentally, but towards the end of the trailer we begin to see some of the secrets lurking beneath the sterile surface.
Also starring Mia Goth (Nymphomaniac) as a fellow patient in this most unusual facility, the official synopsis for A Cure for Wellness reads as so: “An ambitious young executive who is sent to retrieve his company’s CEO from an idyllic but mysterious “wellness center” at a remote location in the Swiss Alps. He soon suspects that the spa’s miraculous treatments are not what they seem. When he begins to unravel its terrifying secrets, his sanity is tested, as he finds himself diagnosed with the same curious illness that keeps all the guests here longing for the cure.”
It’s like Red Barrels’ Outlast game, before Mount Massive Asylum descended into a melting pot of rampaging nutjobs and power-mongering scientists. Look for Verbinski to administer A Cure for Wellness on February 17, 2017.
