Fans ofGore Verbinski’s2002 remake of the Japanese horror filmThe Ringwill be excited to see the director return to the genre with his upcoming film,A Cure for Wellness, starringDane DeHaan,Jason IsaacsandMia Goth, because it’s likely to leave people equally disturbed and freaked out by some of the movie’s ideas and imagery.
A couple weeks back, Collider had a chance to see the first 30 minutes ofA Cure for Wellnessand sit down with Verbinski to talk about what we saw and his vision for the film.
It’s an intriguing film that opens on a dark, stormy late night in a Manhattan office where a financial officer is working at his desk when he suddenly gets a heart attack. Shortly after, we meet Dane Dehaan’s Lockhart, a young exec at the company who is called up to see the company’s partners, who convince him to go to Switzerland to retrieve the company’s CEO, who has decided to remain at a castle in the Alps to get treatment—a “cure” involving the waters in the location.
Once Lockhart arrives at the castle, it’s obvious something isn’t quite right with the place. Everything just seems too perfect—everyone is dressed in white, for one thing—and the cynical Lockhart just wants to grab the company’s CEO and get back on a plane to the States, something that’s marred when he winds up in a horrific car crash while trying to leave the castle. In order to recover, he’s left stranded at the castle longer than planned, and he starts seeing and experiencing strange things.
In another year that’s already looking to be full of more sequels and remakes,A Cure for Wellnesslooks like it’s going to be one of those highly original thrillers, like some of the early movies ofDavid Fincher. From what we’ve seen, it just seems to have this really jarring tone that’s likely to keep viewers on edge and should have everyone talking after they see it.
The day after Fox’s presentation of the film’s opening act, we spoke with Verbinski and tried to learn more about where the idea for this movie came from. Read on below.
When I first heard about this movie, I thought it was based on a book, but it’s not based on a book. This is a completely original thing you came up with as a movie.
GORE VERBINSKI: Yeah. What book did you think it was based on?
I just thought the titleA Cure for Wellnesssounds like a book title, like one of those bestsellers.
VERBINSKI: Oh. I see. No, I would say that we–Justin Haythe and I–are both fans of Thomas Mann’sThe Magic Mountain, which deals with a group of people at a sanitarium, sort of clutching onto their illness like a badge prior to the outbreak of World War I. There’s a sense of denial, I think, that Thomas Mann deals with in that book that we’re playing with as well. We’re our own thing. We’re contemporary Gothic, I’d say.
Even the sanitarium, there are horror tropes in that where the visuals of people that end up there and the fear of being put away in an asylum because people think you’re crazy.
VERBINSKI: An asylum thing is interesting because we really tried to say, look … There’s a section, the first quarter of the movie where we’re saying this guy, this protagonist, is sort of ripe for diagnosis and here’s a place that seems tranquil. Your cell phone doesn’t work and your watch stops and your computer’s not functioning anymore, and maybe that’s what’s wrong with you. Maybe you do need to unplug. The health spa nature of it rather than the insane asylum, it’s certainly a “tiramisu” that place. On the surface, it’s wonderful here, and then there are the treatments, and then below there there’s what happened 200 years ago, and then below that there’s a sense of the inevitable that it’s all going to occur again.
But even the look of the place and the fact that everyone’s walking around in white. At first, it seems very positive and uplifting but there’s something jarring about that image with the nurses, doctors and patients all in white.
VERBINSKI: Before you arrive, everything that takes place in Manhattan has a real sense of … The modern world is a much darker place. I wanted to make it feel like when you arrive here, sonically and image-wise, the audience is sort of ready to be here now. They’ve sort of had it, and right at the opening scene, we’re dealing with the idea of you’re born, you go to school, you get a job, and then you die. Is that what life’s all about? Is that it? Work your ass off until you get prostate cancer? Is there something else?
Was that the idea that you and Justin were playing with? Were you and Justin talking about doing this right afterThe Lone Ranger?
VERBINSKI: Yeah, I think the sense of denial, the sense of feeling like temporarily it’s all going to be okay, and yet there’s something else happening. There’s a darkness lurking. There’s a sense of the inevitable, like a cancer. Like a spot on your x-ray, pulling the protagonist towards an epiphany and a camera down a corridor. It’s spellcasting, using everything you may–sound, image, characters, narrative–to sort of cast a spell. I’d like to think that that’s another character in the movie is just this sense that something else is occurring, something that the character doesn’t see or understand. A sickness. Really the onset of the whole idea was just exploring that.
If I were a psychiatrist, I would ask whether this is meant as an analogy of Hollywood or stuff you had to deal with in Hollywood…
VERBINSKI: It’s interesting because when the genre is elevated, it usually taps into some zeitgeist, right? I think you have monster movies that deal with the Red Scare from the ’50s, and I’d say evenThe Ringdeals with the transferable nature of hatred. Its core is a chain letter and it came out right after 9/11. I think there was a sense of “What did I do to deserve …? What did we do?” That’s the terror. The terror doesn’t go after the perp. It transfers that horror upon an innocent, somebody else. I think withA Cure for Wellness, we’re exploring the sense of there’s a sickness that we’re all in denial of. We all understand history and we’re driving a car into the wall and we’re not turning the wheel. We’re going to live up here. There’s a place above the clouds where you’re able to put all that aside for a moment, and who doesn’t want a note from their doctor saying “You’re absolved,” right? “You’re not well, so none of it’s your fault because you’re not well.” The idea of clutching onto that. All these CEOs and executives, wealthy people, just ending up there, clutching onto their diagnosis. It’s a great calm. The bad news is they’re diseased. The good news is there’s a cure. You’re caught in that loop, and I think everybody who enters that place is caught in that Lotus Eaters, opiate loop of “We’re content to bleed out,” and unaware, waiting for their next treatment.
Some would say this is actually more timely and relevant coming out when it is than it might be when you started it. I’m not sure if you realize how crazy the world would become between when you started writing this movie and when it’s being released.
VERBINSKI: Yeah, exactly. Is the cure worse than the disease? I hope that when people see the movie … It’s not social commentary in any way and neither wasThe Ringin any way, but when you tap into a zeitgeist, when you tap into a palpable, existential crisis, I think that’s when the movie sticks and four days later people are like, “I just have a feeling. I have a feeling in my life and I have a feeling that that movie created in me and I’m affected by it.”
I want to ask about casting Dane as your protagonist. He has some aspects of his character that reminds me of a Jimmy Stewart type thing, but he has more of an edge. He seems very cocky and arrogant, and while part of you empathizes with him, the other part feels that he comes from this world that’s very cutthroat. How did you end up with Dane to play Lockhart?
VERBINSKI: I’ve just always been a fan of his and I saw him in a small part inA Place Beyond the Pines, and was immediately, “Who’s that?” I wanted to put him in my next movie and find a part for him. As we started developingThe Cure, I couldn’t get him out of my head for the role. We talked a lot about not making Lockhart likable, which is dangerous at the beginning, because we need to create some distance for him to fall. He needs to have it in spades, if you will, this kind of contemporary illness, that sort of derivatives trader and take no prisoners. He’s not going to be like his father at any cost. He’s going to make it, and he’s going to crush as many skulls as it takes to get there. I think the more he’s pushing in that direction, the more when the doctor puts his hand on your knee and says, “When was the last time you felt well?,” the more you’re ready to crumble.
We get that impression when he meets with the board that none of them are very nice people. It’s obvious that he comes from a world where no one there is nice and he has to be that way as well.
VERBINSKI: He’s going to be one of them one day. He’s just new at it. They’re just better liars and cheaters.
I want to talk about these locations. You spoke briefly at the presentation about finding the castle where you shot, but did you end up building a lot of the interiors and that stuff?
VERBINSKI: No, very few interiors. A couple of hallways we built, but we found a great, old hospital outside of Berlin called Belitz, which was actually where Hitler was treated after World War I. It’s an old hospital and has an interesting history. It had been run by the Soviets for a while and completely abandoned. We got in, we put in new grass, we repainted it, we redid the roofs, and it was all there. Obviously, when we deal with water work, we have to build our tanks and things like that, but no, most of it was location-based. We went to Germany with my camera men, basically, and nobody else I’d ever worked with before, which was very stripped down and getting to the root of things, and under the radar and really kind of left alone.
A Cure for Wellnessopens nationwide on August 24, 2025. you’re able to read our interview with Gore’s leading man, Dane DeHaan,right here.
