Alex writes about Gore Verbinksi’s A Cure for Wellness.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The first half of this title is simultaneously one of my favourite questions to ask about a given movie as well as the name of one of my favourite podcasts. Since December 10th<\/sup>, 2010*, Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas have co-hosted a show built around discussing terrible films, with the core idea of the title being that each of these films is so bad that they probably shouldn\u2019t have made it past the brainstorming stage. And yet, despite not being the most scholastic podcast in the world, HDTGM is frequently interesting for non-comedic reasons that reflect the cinematic climate of the when their subject was released.<\/p>\n *Coincidentally the same day James and I posted our first episode of the MacGuffin Men. Both podcasts have grown to be\u00a0equally successful.<\/em><\/p>\n Now, I do not have the same goals here. I am not here to roast Dan DeHaan nor creepy water nor bicycles. I liked A Cure for Wellness; I liked it plenty. I wish five movies of its eel-filled ilk were released each year. And yet in a cinematic world of continued McDonaldization-based despair, this one-off horror film with a mid-level budget was produced and released in the dead zone before Logan began 2017\u2019s superhero parade. This was not a micro-budget independent movie that the producers could comfortably assume would make its money back in a Netflix rights sale; this was an honest to god gamble on a movie. So, after watching this movie that I enjoyed, I found myself continually asking one question: how did this get made?<\/p>\n This will be a series of (at least two) essays about movies that somehow got made within a cinematic world increasingly driven by capitalism, despite said movies seeming like surefire commercial gambles. In a world of safe sameness, I want to talk about some bizarre entries that were allowed to exist by the kingdom\u2019s gatekeepers.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The road to A Cure for Wellness starts relatively simply: Gore Verbinski is a talented director. He has made numerous truly well directed films, from The Weather Man to (assuming I\u2019m recalling it correctly) MouseHunt. The Ring is an enjoyable horror film that made a close friend of mine terrified of closets for at least six months in 2002. The first Pirates of the Caribbean film is mostly wonderful, and the third entry in the series is less so, but better than people thought. (The second ranks among the least enjoyable cinematic experiences I have ever had.) Rango won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and is genuinely fun. The Lone Ranger was a mess – another entry into Hollywood\u2019s abstract \u201cArmie Hammer can be a superstar, right?\u201d series \u2013 but, oh, how those train sequences sung. Verbinski\u2019s visual aplomb was basically the only part of that movie that wasn\u2019t terrible. And now here we are, in 2017, locked in a German castle trying to avoid having our brains fried.<\/p>\n Verbinski is not accepted as an auteur and – despite his considerable talent – that feels proper. His career occupies a sort of in-between space in Hollywood; he\u2019s no auteur, but he\u2019s too talented to be just another hack whose name gets passed from project to project by a studio. (He\u2019s not Gavin O\u2019Connor, say.) That said, Verbinski still lacks a certain name recognition: A Cure for Wellness can\u2019t be marketed off his name in the way Dunkirk could be marketed off Christopher Nolan\u2019s, try as a trailer might. In A Cure for Wellness\u2019 spots, we are given the line \u201cFrom visionary director Gore Verbinski,\u201d a name few (normal) people know, and a directorial vision even fewer could imagine.<\/p>\n Simply put, Verbinski has not made a film that is well-remembered by the masses since the first Pirates film in 2003*. If people know Verbinski\u2019s name for anything, they know him as the director of the first three Pirates films (and perhaps The Ring). Verbinski is a good director who is overqualified for many of the jobs he has taken, which lead to their surprising quality, but who has \u2013 likely because of the commercial leanings of his work – remained under-qualified for a leap into the auteurist ranks. It feels odd that Verbinski still had metaphorical chips of box office success to cash in after The Lone Ranger, and yet it seems he did.<\/p>\n *The people that remember Rango probably don\u2019t remember the name of its director.<\/em><\/p>\n A Cure for Wellness is a relatively simple horror story; it\u2019s basically The Shining sans Scatman Crothers. Dane DeHaan goes into the belly of an apparent beast to get a higher up from his company back to New York, and in doing so DeHaan finds himself in a watery potential grave. There is misconception, a certain sort of vitamin water, a creepy young woman, and a potentially creepier Jason Isaacs. Admittedly, not a ton happens here, and the film is a relatively standard, slow-burning horror show with few jump scares. In a couple of different interviews, Verbinski has cited films like Rosemary\u2019s Baby as reference points, and the film feels like a successful (if not qualitatively identical) attempt to create that atmosphere. A Cure for Wellness feels decidedly old-fashioned, the type of vision we moviegoers continually feel like does not get made anymore.<\/p>\n But this vision was held, this vision was financed, and that financed vision is A Cure for Wellness. There is nothing essential about it \u2013 had it been released in 1998 it would have seemed like merely any other horror film \u2013 but it is splendidly directed, appropriately creepy and (in at least one scene) borderline horrifying. Verbinski\u2019s best work has always been marked by directorial patience and in a world of cinematic sprinting, and seeing the same approach he applied to The Ring in 2002 fifteen years later feels even more refreshing today.<\/p>\n So, how did this movie get made? It seems like a variety of moneymen and women pooled together from both America and Germany, with New Regency taking the producerial lead. The company – formerly Regency pictures – has become a strong voice for filmmakers looking to tell their story in their way; recent New Regency successes include The Revenant, Gone Girl, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave, and The Big Short. Transitioning from mostly standard entertainment, squeakuels and shitty action movies, this decade has seen New Regency primarily focus on helping filmmakers make their passion projects, and it seems like Verbinski falls into this category. (It is unclear how much of the money was provided by German producers, but these things are usually foggy, especially for a film nobody fucking saw.)<\/p>\n Alright, well, what was that vision? Where does the passion lie in A Cure for Wellness? I still have no idea.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s surprisingly difficult to find much about Verbinski online. There are not a lot of profiles about him, perhaps as a result of a concerted effort by Verbinski, or perhaps because the filmmaking media does not find his work worthy. Listening to the interviews that can be found, though, it sounds like Verbinski mostly wanted to create a modern horror film that mirrored what he enjoyed about a more patient version of the genre from the 1970s. That makes sense, but I\u2019m more confused by how Verbinski convinced others not to make him cut it down into 100 minutes. New Regency really did believe in him, I suppose.<\/p>\n The budget for this film has been reported at $40 million (although Verbinski\u2019s skill makes it look like double that), which is exactly the level of film Steven Soderbergh famously declared does not get made anymore. A Cure for Wellness is a patient horror movie made for adults in a frequently youth-oriented genre, and it almost feels disorienting watching it in 2017. Somehow, Verbinski convinced people to have faith in his ideas, faith that his ideas would work out for everybody financially in the long run.<\/p>\n When you make enough movies that make enough money, financiers will start to believe you have the capacity to predict the way the market will accept your next venture. As much as I hate talking about the financial aspect of filmmaking – although I\u2019m realizing that seems to be the only thing I\u2019m doing in this piece – I am realistic enough to understand that in this case it is important. Giving Gore Verbinski a cinematic credit check, it\u2019s pretty easy to see why people would believe he could turn their money into a movie with which to make even more money. Outside of his last film The Lone Ranger \u2013 a notoriously messy production that could easily be explained as something Verbinski never really had control over \u2013 the last film of his to fail at the box office was The Weather Man in 2005. In short: people may not know who the fuck Gore Verbinski is, but they flock to his films nonetheless.<\/p>\n The question remains: why did Verbinski want to make this <\/em>film? What was it about A Cure for Wellness that made him cash in his chips to make it? Typically when a filmmaker is using so much of their accrued wealth to make a project, it means something to them. I can easily imagine Verbinski seeing The Lone Ranger script and his paycheque side by side and saying \u201cThis is worth it,\u201d but when the script gets larger and the cheque smaller as it does on a project like A Cure for Wellness, you have to find something in the former to keep you moving.<\/p>\n So, I set out to solve this problem. I watched every Gore Verbinski movie and treated him as an auteur as best as I could; I looked for recurring themes, visual motifs, and what made his films work (or not work). Given that Verbinski is typically interested in specifically crowd-pleasing films, it\u2019s a bit more difficult to gauge; when somebody is making a film for others instead of themselves, they\u2019re more willing to cut the more personal aspects for the sake of the crowd. I tackled the last of Verbinski\u2019s films that could be construed as more personal, the \u201cthanks for making The Ring*!\u201d faux-indie comedy that is The Weather Man.<\/p>\n