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A Cure for Wellness | 2017 | R | - 8.8.5

A Wall Street investment firm sends one of its junior executives (Dane DeHaan) to an isolated sanatorium in the Swiss Alps to bring back their CEO (Harry Groener). Once there, the executive questions the spa's miracle cures and is prevented from leaving. Also with Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Adrian Schiller, Celia Imrie and Ashok Mandanna. Directed by Gore Verbinski. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in German without translation or subtitles. [2:26]

SEX/NUDITY 8 - A man takes a young woman to a cavern and pulls back a curtain to reveal a bed: she says, "I don't want to," he ties her arms to the head posts and squeezes her clothed breasts, then rips the top off her dress (revealing her breasts) as he shudders and groans and squeezes her breasts, then reaches under her skirt apparently to the groin as she cries and he brings his fingers to his nose, smells them, and smiles; he unbuckles his belt as another man arrives and calls out, "She's your daughter!" (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
 A nurse wearing a white uniform is braless and her nipples are seen through the material; with her back to the camera, she unbuttons her top and drops it as she stands in front of an orderly seated in a desk chair (we see part of her bare back and the side of one breast) as the camera cuts to the man's blank face and his shoulders shudder as we hear sounds of masturbation happening below the frame; she walks over to the man and we see her bare breasts as the scene ends.
 An elderly man on a gurney is nude and we see shriveled genitals briefly. Several older men in a steam room wear long towels from waist to ankles (we see abdomens, chests, backs and shoulders); a younger man wears the same type of towel (we see his bare chest and back) and an elderly woman walks across the background, wearing a towel from waist to ankles and we see her breasts (no nipples are evident). A row of glass cases contain nearly nude men and women floating in liquid; the men wear only thong underwear and we see their chest, abdomen and some groin bulges while the women are shown wearing bikini-like underwear and we see bare breasts and legs to the hips. We see two men in back nudity as they are hosed down and another man from the front, (his upper chest is shown) as an orderly hoses his back. A photograph shows a woman in back nudity while being hosed down. A woman lies nude in a bathtub full of eels, an arm covers her chest, and bare waist area, hip and partial thigh. Several women wear one-piece swimsuits that reveal cleavage. Women wearing swimsuits in a swimming pool (we see cleavage) stand with shirtless men and lift beach balls up and down. A shirtless man floating in water is seen wearing shorts (we see his bare chest and abdomen). On old woman on a gurney is covered by a sheet to upper chest, revealing her upper breasts. A billboard shows a woman with her shirt raised high to show thigh-high hose and garters. A woman wears short-shorts with hosiery.
 A young woman in a tavern dances slowly to rock music when a man begins to dance with her, rubbing her hips with his hands and another man tells him to stop. A man presents a wedding dress to his ward and takes her to a cavern where men and women wearing cloaks hold candles; the man places a locket around the young woman's neck and the camera cuts to them dancing among wedding guests.
 An older woman asks a younger man, "Have you ever had a 12-inch [anatomical term deleted] in your [anatomical term deleted]? That's what prison would be like." A man says that a baroness in the 1800s was infertile and that she had miscarriages of deformed fetuses.

VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - A man rolls down a cavern staircase and another man chases him, chokes him, and holds his head over a large pool of eels; a young woman arrives and slices a shovel blade into the gory, bloody head of the second man, who falls into the pool and many eels attack him and from a camera angle above the water (we see a large area of blood spread to fill most of the pool).
 A man shouts at psychiatric patients at a banquet and they all rise from tables, mumble and mob him; the camera cuts to the man in an iron lung surrounded by other men and women, also in iron lungs in a row on either side of him; a doctor forces an O-ring into the man's mouth and a wide diameter tube down his throat several feet that he attaches to a hanging container of liquid and eels and sends the contents of the container into the tube as the victim's eyes roll back and he shudders while under the iron lung, a small vial catches drops of pink liquid and the camera cuts to the victim sitting on a bench, staring and unmoving.
 A man pours gasoline onto a floor and tosses a lit cigarette lighter and flames consume a cavern room and go up air vents into a ball room and burn the curtains, causing men and women to run screaming and fall down staircases; a man in the cavern catches fire, runs, and rolls on the floor to extinguish the flames and he and the first man fist fight briefly, the second man runs out of the room and the first man unties a young woman from where she was tied to a bed.
 A man confronts another man about incest (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details); the second man pushes the first man onto the floor, rips off a simulated face to reveal bloody gore beneath and tosses the first man through shelving, punches him in the face and punches him to the floor. A man in a tavern punches another man who has a leg cast up to the thigh and the man with the cast falls; the men fist fight briefly and one man pulls a hooked knife out when another man shouts to stop. A man shouts at a second man, punches him, and the man punches back; one man falls, hits his head, it bleeds and he dies. A young woman punches a man in the face and he falls (this happens in two scenes with two different men).
 A man suffers a heart attack and gasps at his desk, touches his chest, gets a drink of water from a cooler, gasps loudly, grunts, clutches his chest, and falls to the floor, tipping over the water cooler, which floods the floor; he shudders and dies as we see his face with eyes open and a dead goldfish floats in a bowl of water on a nearby desk.
 A man pushes bodies that are under sheets on gurneys into a building where we see dark corridors and a large murky pool; one of the gurneys falls into the pool, the man dumps a dead body into the pool and eels attack and eat it with some blood showing in the water. We see three large Petri dishes with what looks like a slice of human brain in each and we then see human faces below and attached to the brain slices, as if the heads were halved from ear to ear. A man drinks a glass of water and sees residue in the glass, touching it, and it turns into a tiny eel and disappears.
 A man says there has always been bad blood between Swiss villagers and the staff of a sanatorium because a baron lived there and married his sister in the 1800s; the villagers had burned down the castle and burned the sister after cutting a baby out of her womb and we see a line-drawing of a woman burning at a stake and a baby falling to the ground (no blood is shown). A man says about a clinic patient, "I'll hit him in the head and drag him out by the hair." A man points a sword at another man and shouts, but does not use it.
 A man and a young woman bike to town and hit a car; the man falls over the hood and onto the ground (we see his slightly cut lip that bleeds) where two men and a woman from the car speak sternly to the man on the ground, who gets up and, with the young woman, continues into town. A man in a village throws an egg at a visitor's car windshield, shouts, laughs, and grabs his crotch. A man falls and pushes over tall metal shelving holding bottles that shatter loudly and cover the floor with glass shards. A man breaks a water glass, cuts a finger that bleeds and uses shards to cut off a leg cast.
 A doctor gives a man a vial of what he calls vitamins and the man is placed into a tall iron flotation chamber with electrodes on his chest and a breathing device in his mouth; water levels are raised and he hallucinates that many eels are attacking him, along with a girl floating around him and he panics and pounds on the lid before blacking out; orderlies open the flotation chamber and get the man out as he coughs up some water and revives. A man looks at three X-rays of a jaw with missing teeth and in a later scene, he looks at his teeth in a mirror and pulls one out with his fingers; a nurse puts the bloody tooth into a jar of water and a doctor puts the man into an old dentist chair, places a metal brace on his head, stretches his lips open with metal clamps, clamps his wrists to the chair, and drills out an incisor (blood spurts out and onto the victim's face); we see the man later with all of his teeth intact, without explanation. A man finds glass cases containing fluid and the bodies of men and women; one of the men moves and the first man pounds on the glass with a metal crutch and his hand, to no avail, and in a later scene, one of the men from the cases walks into a room and startles the first man.
 A man on a farm has a cow pressed in a wooden brace in the air as he cuts its stomach and it struggles and screeches; water, blood, eels and a deformed calf fall to the ground. A deer runs in front of a car that hits it and the windshield breaks loudly as the deer screeches and the car rolls down a long incline into a ditch at the foot of a mountain; the deer limps onto the pavement, screeching, shuddering and falling several times, until it convulses and dies with blood covering its mouth and legs; the camera cuts to a man who was a passenger in the car, now in a bed with a cast on his leg to the thigh. We see a slit-open eel body with some blood on one side, preserved eels in jars, and deformed jarred babies preserved with small heads and undeveloped faces. A doctor's office has a stuffed deer head on a wall.
 A man's nose bleeds and he blacks out; a doctor looks at his eyes when he revives and we see that they are bloodshot. A man finds a laundry room where a woman is scraping what looks like red bones with a knife. We see urine specimens and one seems to have a worm in it. A young woman grabs her stomach and groans; she walks into a swimming pool, grabs her stomach, and begins menstruating, filling the water with blood, and then exits the water and walks into a dining room, where a man sees blood on her skirt and covers her with a jacket. A young woman looks in a trash can and sees bloody toilet paper. A nurse removes a pillow case with a large blood stain on it from an empty bed.
 A man has several childhood flashbacks of his father stopping the car with the boy in the back on a bridge in the rain and jumping off; he then has a vision of himself jumping off in place of his father. A woman startles awake, shouting, after a dream in which a girl in a long dress floats under water. A man startles awake, gasping, after a dream in which he sees a rectangular wooden box (a coffin) sliding into an oven and burning. A man on crutches gets lost in a maze of tiled steam rooms and the doors disappear, but reappear later. A young girl plays a violent video game with images of tall fires. A boy draws a picture of a burning castle. We see a line-drawing of a man hanging from a rope on a pole on a church balcony. A boy on a plane draws a devil face in the condensation on a window.
 Several scenes show an injured man limping in pain, on creaky crutches with a cast on his leg to the thigh; sometimes he tries to run and falls, but does not further injure himself. A man is shown with dark circles under his eyes throughout the film.
 The rooms, corridors, and floors of a clinic are covered with damp tiles and the front gate contains two large eels. A toilet handle rattles itself in three scenes and a man lifts the lid, letting eels swarm out; he drops the lid and the eels disappear, but he sees one slither down the toilet bowl. A man rips a toilet out of the floor and water shoots from the wall.

LANGUAGE 5 - About 9 F-words and its derivatives, 7 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms, 4 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, insane, freak, cripples, old people), 3 religious exclamations (For Christ's Sake, Jesus, My God).

SUBSTANCE USE - Several people consume an unknown fluid called "vitamins" from medicine droppers, we see many large bottles on shelves in a basement area, and many glass jars of powders are seen in a cabinet. Two empty single-serving liquor bottles are seen on an airplane tray table, three men drink champagne from paper cups in an office, men and women in a tavern drink from beer mugs, a teen girl drinks from a mug of beer and grimaces, a man drinks a small glass of whiskey in an office, and a man drinks from a glass of wine and another man has a glass of wine in front of him (he does not drink) at a dinner. A man chews a piece of Nicorette gum, a man smokes a cigarette in a car as well as on the steps of a building and twice in a tavern, a man smokes a cigarette in a corner of a cavern, and three men smoke cigarettes in a tavern.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Cloning, psychological suffering, alternative medicine, kidnapping, captivity, torture, sexual assault, incest, dishonesty, corrupt business people, vanity, greed, envy, work stress, escape, truth, freedom.

MESSAGE - Some people may find work stress and possible cures for it to be equally bad.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.

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