A Cure For Wellness is a new psychological horror from director Gore Verbinksi. The film’s star, Dane DeHaan, spoke to Fandom to tell us exactly why it might just be the most bizarre movie to hit cinemas in 2017.
“Gore told me he wanted to make a movie that was inspired by the thrillers of the 70s,” says DeHaan. “He talked about the themes of it and the sickness in society. Then he sent me home with the script.”
DeHaan says that Verbinski suggested he watch a number of films, but this was more for tone than anything else. For DeHaan, the film is an entirely “original thing”.
He says, “I watched The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, The Tenant, Rear Window. Someone the other day said it reminded them of a mix between Alice in Wonderland and A Clockwork Orange. I thought maybe that was the closest someone has gotten to nailing [it], if there are two movies it could be like, like maybe those two movies made a baby. But even that doesn’t quite do it.”
One of the film’s standout scenes is the sequence in the isolation tank, in which DeHann’s character Lockhart is immersed as a form of therapy. In the scene, eels are introduced to the water.
“It took two weeks to shoot,” says DeHaan. “I didn’t expect to be underwater for two weeks when I read the script but that was what we needed to do to get the sequence. Some of the eels in the movie are real but those [in the tank] are fake eels, I’m happy to say. I don’t think I would have gotten in that tank with all those eels!”
One reason the film is so creepy and odd is because of its unexpectedly mixed tone. There’s tension and horror, sure, but there’s also a whiff of satire about it.
DeHaan says, “I think the movie is fun to watch. We certainly weren’t laughing while we were making it but I think there is an entertaining thing about it. I think it’s not just scary; like I said, it’s a wild ride and you will laugh sometimes. Not all the time, but you’ll laugh sometimes.”
‘A Cure For Wellness’ is released in the US on February 17 and the UK on February 24.