21 Days of Spooky: A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016)

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21 Days of Spooky is not about pop culture that sets out to fright you with brain-eating, viscerae-hanging, slash-killing scenes, but with thoughts that linger and persist on your life long after you've watched them. Or are just downright creepy. Tonight's spooky: Gore Verbinski's A Cure for Wellness. Some spoilers ahead.

What's it about?: A Cure for Wellness is about a hot-shot executive at a big financial firm who travels to a secluded wellness retreat in the Swiss Alps to retrieve his company's CEO. He, instead, finds a whole lotta creepy shit involving rich people, eels, and whatever else the writers decided to throw into the mix.

If yesterday's film was about the dreading hopelessness that surrounds it all, this film is more like the creeping sense of "what on earth's tits did I just watch"-ness that comes up once every now and then and leaves you thinking for some good long minutes. But not always WTFery is a bad thing, and this is an example of that. This is a fairytale of weird proportions, with the kind of visuals and suspense you can expect from the dude that did the Ring US adaptation, and the topics treated don't differ so much from what you can see in HBO shows.

Everything in Wellness feels and expresses itself like a nightmare. Have you ever had this sort of nightmare that starts off a bit strange, then it lulls you into a sort of uneasy safety, only to later show you it was every bit as dangerous as you thought it was going to be? The film even starts in what seems to be a safe spot, following a man who's spending some quiet time at the office... only to plop out dead shortly after having a sip from the water cooler. And it's only then when you realize the water he drank looks iffy, even though Verbinski framed it enough times for you to realize.

Now, let's clarify, the water looking iffy is the whole theme of the film. Everything is water, so help us all. But it gets worse! Verbinski cuts to everything as if it would present some sort of danger, and guess what? Everything is rightfully dangerous here! A little ballerina doll? Danger. Wild animals? Danger. Being locked in a huge cistern while only guarded by one dude? Danger. Jason Isaacs? Of course it's danger, the odds of having a movie with the guy and not have him be the villain are as small as a smurf. And, to boot, the film has creepy imagery that will certainly yell DANGER straight at your face.

Our weird hero Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) has a life consumed by greed, and said greed is what brings him to the retreat in the first place. Thankfully, he distrusts the place from the get-go, yet there's nothing he can do when a deer crosses over his path back home and sends him to be hospitalized at the retreat for his "safety". Drink some water, it'll do you good, pretty much everyone tells him, nevermind that the water usually has this weird eel-like look. There's a lot of eels in this, even in the toilets.

Lockhart's elderly rich people companions start disappearing, an Igor-like minion hauls bodies to a pit in the middle of the night, and the young man starts losing teeth, but he can't go anywhere as his leg is busted and there's no bus service in the area. The only hope for him is Hannah (Mia Goth), another patient with child-like demeanor that also randomly shows up in ethereal sequences. Is she of help? Of course not, you silly goose! But, as Lockhart becomes more and more involved with Hannah, creepier and creepier situations pop up.

This film drags on in several places, especially during the middle, even though these are the most effective sequences as Verbinski goes full Verbinski and takes us into stretched-out passageways, lingers in characters' stares, travels around the retreat's labyrinthine paths, and keeps reminding us that water is an integral part of the plot. But is it really? As more of the place's backstory is revealed, things sort themselves out for an ending you may have seen coming, but is as unsettling as everything else that came before it... even though it isn't anywhere as creepy.

Let's be honest, very few endings would be as creepy as the batshit sequences that take place in the last two thirds of Wellness. People suspended in water who randomly open their eyes and are just chilling there, teeth getting pulled out by force, a guy revealing his face is actually a mask and he's more like a melted Red Skull, Mia Goth in a bathtub full of eels, eels getting shoved into people's throats via a weird steampunk device, eels surrounding people in water until said water is nothing but eels, cow corpses full of eels... did I mention this film has a fuckton of eels?

By the time the end credits start rolling, you may realize you have learned absolutely nothing, or may feel disappointed with the way the story closed. But nothing is gonna stop those 5 a.m. "dude, remember the dead cow full of eels that went nowhere plot-wise?" thoughts.

Tomorrow: Get your glasses ready for The Twilight Zone's "Time Enough at Last".