A Cure for Wellness
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: February 17, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
19
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
ConsequenceBlake GobleFeb 15, 2017
A Cure for Wellness feels like a return to form for the director. It’s not hard to imagine how Verbinski might have come up with a baffling horror film about the pressures of work/health balance. His latest film is rich with invention, intrigue, and a mind-melting liveliness that’s impossible to ignore. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichFeb 7, 2017
Verbinski packs so much stuff into his giddy Grand Guignol, and the more he crams in the better it works. Read full review
80
CineVueMartyn ConterioFeb 23, 2017
Verbinski doesn't skimp on thrills, mind you. There are jump scares galore, acts of literally penetrating violence and the denouement goes for full-on operatic perversity. Fans of Gothic horror - treat yourself and take the cure. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 9, 2017
Visually ripe and located just around the corner from melodrama, A Cure for Wellness is a cousin to Guillermo del Toro’s recent "Crimson Peak," another thriller nostalgic for the deep-pocketed lushness of ’30s-era horror-branded studios like Universal, the makers of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein." Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithFeb 16, 2017
Mia Goth is as fine a name as can be imagined for the actress playing a creepy, hollow waif in A Cure for Wellness, and her name is practically a tag line for this fantastically eerie movie: “Me a Gothic!” Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Feb 15, 2017
Equal parts baroque fairy-tale, atmospheric mystery, and hideous body-horror nightmare, the film puts what could have been a cost-effective genre exercise on steroids, giving life to a two-and-half-hour, R-rated Frankenstein monster. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineCarson LundFeb 7, 2017
Most gratifying throughout A Cure for Wellness is the moment-to-moment anticipation of where Gore Verbinski will put his camera next. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 16, 2017
You might feel like you’re in the company of a manic cinephile friend breathlessly recounting his favorite movie scenes in no particular order. You admire his devotion, his taste and his scholarship, but in the end the experience is probably more satisfying for him than it is for you. Still, the company isn’t bad. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekFeb 16, 2017
Maybe even more surprisingly, about 70% of the crazily imaginative plot hangs together. But the other 30%, sloppily thought out and superfluous, drags the movie down. Read full review
65
The VergeBryan BishopFeb 8, 2017
A Cure for Wellness is a beautifully shot film full of interesting ideas, but it dumbs itself down at every possible turn. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshFeb 16, 2017
A Cure for Wellness is an odd film. It's exceedingly well-crafted; the attention to detail and design, composition and camera movement on display here has largely been abandoned by recent horror films grasping for a jarring sense of realism. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughFeb 16, 2017
It is at least 10 movies in one, some of them ingenious parodies, but all adding up to a cluttered, confused anticlimax. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 16, 2017
When the climax does come, it arrives with a bra­cing blast of campy absurdity so flamboyantly deviant that it glows with a kind of perverse brilliance. But the setup is starved of logic, the film’s vital oxygen. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 7, 2017
What “Cure” doesn’t do particularly well is introduce a mystery, add menace and heighten suspense in racing towards a conclusion. There’s no “Race” for the “Cure.” Still, it’s just chilling to experience, a novel and thought-provoking take on what ails us and our fruitless search for relief. Read full review
60
EmpirePhil de SemlyenFeb 20, 2017
A high-altitude horror – think a Bram Stoker reworking of *The Shining* or Shutter Highland – of real craft. Ultimately, though, the plot turns out to be thinner than the air. Read full review
60
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyFeb 16, 2017
It’s Verbinski’s eye that makes A Cure for Wellness such a wild, nightmarish treat. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoFeb 7, 2017
In its braggadocios final form, genre fans have a unicorn watch that surely won’t be replicated anytime soon. Points for creativity, points for ambition, and points for a studio showing the balls to back provocative genre cinema. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 7, 2017
The movie’s operatic claustrophobia makes its mark. Cult status beckons. Read full review
58
The Film StageBrian RoanFeb 7, 2017
It is all of the harrowing horror of an asylum film with none of the deeper, more disconcerting subtext or mind-bending logic puzzles — a film not entirely devoid of merit, but nonetheless hobbled by poor storytelling. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 16, 2017
The terrors we see in A Cure for Wellness are never as scary as they are beautiful, but they are never so beautiful as they are arbitrary. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 16, 2017
There’s no rule that main characters have to be likable, and DeHaan’s Lockhart isn’t, but they at least have to be interesting. He fails that litmus test. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 16, 2017
This is not so much a horror movie as a lookbook for one – an assemblage of scary-flick odds and ends slotted next to each other with the thinnest of connective tissue. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzFeb 16, 2017
Verbinski manages some squirm-worthy moments, and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli creates a creepy look throughout. But the story doesn’t make sense as it goes along and then devolves into absurdity. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzFeb 15, 2017
I keep forgetting the title of A Cure for Wellness and calling it “The Color of Despair.” It’s an accurate mistake. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldFeb 15, 2017
If Verbinski could have trimmed about an hour from the film (which weighs in at a portly 146 minutes), he might have had something. Read full review
50
Village VoiceApril WolfeFeb 10, 2017
The director conjures some chills with a cold plunge into an enchanting and frightful world — the imagery’s straight out of a Kubrick and Lynch nightmare — but the story unravels as he tries to overexplain his evil doctor’s devilish plot. Read full review
50
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganFeb 7, 2017
The film is visually arresting, but narratively stale. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 7, 2017
The movie deprives us of either a tragic villain or a sympathetic lead, hoping that its grab bag of squirm-inducing details — dental drills, stillborn livestock, flesh-eating eels — will suffice, when in fact, they reveal how a shorter, tighter treatment ought to have done the trick. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyFeb 16, 2017
Narratively preposterous and probably an hour too long, it’s the year’s first big howler. It could have been DeHaan’s "Shutter Island," but instead it’s just Gore Verbinski’s latest self-indulgent mess following "The Lone Ranger." Read full review
42
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthFeb 7, 2017
A Cure For Wellness is an exercise in watching a film continually stifle itself at its most compelling moments. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 23, 2017
When A Cure for Wellness goes full wacko, it certainly doesn’t worry about questions of taste. But it hasn’t worried about questions of logic, duration, or novelty, either. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczFeb 15, 2017
The story submerges and drowns in preposterous gothic nonsense. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyFeb 7, 2017
Over-produced and under-thought-out, this unconscionably elaborate attempt at an old-fashioned Gothic thriller looks great but is beyond silly. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Brad WheelerFeb 16, 2017
The problem is that somewhere around the middle of the film, one begins to realize it probably isn’t going any place worthwhile. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubFeb 16, 2017
The film is a plodding 2 ½ hours long, with an abundance of livestock gore, endless dental trauma and a violent sex scene. Read full review
25
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallFeb 16, 2017
A Cure for Wellness is a repellent curiosity, rich in atmosphere yet starved for dramatic morsels a sound plot might nourish. Read full review
25
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeFeb 7, 2017
We get a few effective set pieces early on that provide the requisite scares that A Cure for Wellness so obviously wants to deliver, but the movie just doesn’t know when to quit, lurching onward and growing more and more ludicrous. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenFeb 15, 2017
The horror that lies at the heart of the film is fairly obvious, and with no characters for whom we have a rooting interest, A Cure for Wellness is as difficult to swallow as castor oil. Read full review
0
ObserverRex ReedFeb 21, 2017
A long, incoherent German horror film called A Cure for Wellness is well on its way to late-night cable TV. If you’re a dedicated masochist looking for torture, look for it fast. It won’t live to see a re-release. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFeb 16, 2017
A godawful gothic horror flick. Read full review
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