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Hi, Mystery Recapped here. Today, I am going to explain an American Psychological Neo-Gothic

Horror Film called ‘A Cure For Wellness’. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care!

The protagonist of the movie; Lockhart, is a self-centered,

young man, who doesn’t care about anything other than his work. He is so career-obsessed

that he has left his mother in an old age home, believing she is a distraction.

In the opening scene, he is called to a meeting with the company’s higher ups and

fellow board members. There, he reads an open letter from the CEO; Pembroke,

who addresses the board members. He reveals that he is currently at a wellness spa in

Switzerland on a two week getaway. However, in the letter, Pembroke expresses no intention to

return back and he calls out the company for engaging in illegal and unethical financial

practices. Pembroke also says that he would never approve the company’s planned merger

with another finance giant and warns the board members against contacting him again.

After going through the troubling letter, the members unanimously assign Lockhart to bring

Pembroke back to New York. They warn him that if he fails to do the job, he’ll have to take the

fall for the entire scandal. Left with no choice, Lockhart agrees and travels to Switzerland.

After touching down, he is driven up the hill to the spa by a man named Enrico. The two

strike up a conversation and Enrico says that he doesn’t understand why rich people from all over

the world come looking for this particular spa. Their conversation is interrupted when an angry

villager chucks a drink at the car. However, Enrico doesn’t even respond, implying that this

is a common thing here. He explains that the villagers have a bad history with the people

that live on the hill. 2 centuries ago, the hill was owned by an aristocratic family. Apparently,

the family’s last baron was so obsessed with the purity of his bloodline, he decided that

only his sister was clean enough to carry his child. When the church disapproved of the union,

he renounced God. This didn't go down well with the villagers and on the baron’s wedding night,

they attacked and burnt the illicit couple alive before leveling down the entire castle.

After that, the place was rebuilt and turned into a wellness spa for the rich people,

who come here looking for the cure for their emptiness.

In the next scene, Lockhart arrives at the spa but learns that the visiting hours have already

ended. Therefore, he takes an appointment to speak with the manager. He then goes outside

to make a call and there, he notices a window to an eerie looking basement.

After a while, he finally meets the manager and asks to speak with Pembroke. After taking

vitamin droplets from a peculiar blue bottle, the manager tells him that their treatments are

most effective when exposure to the stresses of the modern world are strictly limited. He

reveals that the spa is built over an ancient aquifer that offers rejuvenating qualities.

Lockhart looks at the pictures in the room and notices a man with bandages all over his body,

posing in front of the main building. However, his gaze is abruptly disturbed when the manager

tells him to come back after 7 in the evening when Pembroke will be done with his daily treatment.

Before leaving, Lockhart drinks a glass full of water and thanks the manager for cooperating.

Unfortunately, on their way out of the hill, a deer suddenly comes out of the woods and

strikes the car. It somehow gets lodged in the windshield and due to the ensuing struggle,

Enrico loses control of the car and ends up crashing into a ditch.

Three days later, Lockhart wakes up in a room at the same spa. Shortly after,

the director of the place; Volmer approaches him and explains that he broke his leg in

the accident. Volmer says that he has already notified Lockhart’s firm about

the accident and asks him to try out the spa's treatments during his stay. After he leaves,

Lockhart drinks water as he watches a man covering the window to a basement

he saw earlier. To his horror, he then finds a parasitic creature floating in his glass.

Following this, Lockhart sneaks out of the room and finds Pembroke in the bath house.

He asks the old CEO to come home with him but the latter claims that he can’t leave

because he is unwell. Pembroke then takes a dip in the water and when he emerges,

he suddenly redevelops interest in the stock market as if he has broken out of a spell. Hence,

he agrees to return to New York and lead his company once again.

Excited, Lockhart quickly gets ready and calls for a taxi. As he waits for Pembroke,

he meets amateur historian Victoria Watkins. She shows Lockhart the remains of the church

where the baron apparently executed a priest. It is believed that people used to come from miles

for the miracles attributed to the holy water. Lockhart then tells her about the

baron's obsession with bloodline purity and she promises to look more into it.

After a while, he meets the youngest patient at the institution;

Hannah. She considers herself a special case because she is the only patient who

is allowed to take the vitamins from a blue bottle that Volmer and the other staff take.

Later, when Pembroke doesn’t show up and goes missing from his room,

Lockhart confronts Volmer. The latter claims that Pembroke’s condition suddenly deteriorated

and he has been moved to the next stage of the treatment. Lockhart accuses him of

lying and calls him out for deliberately making his patients sick to keep milking

them for money. Just then, Lockhart’s nose starts to bleed and he collapses.

Dr. Volmer takes him to his clinic for a few tests and there, Lockhart notices Hannah’s

picture on his desk. When asked about it, Volmer claims that she’s special to him

because she experienced a serious trauma when she was very young. Shortly after,

he reads Lockhart’s medical report and recommends him to undergo treatment. The arrogant

American hesitantly agrees and when Volmer is distracted, he steals Pembroke’s medical file.

Lockhart then undergoes treatment inside a water tank. However, during it, the incharge

gets distracted, and the tank suddenly fills up with eels, causing Lockhart to panic. He tries

to escape but in the process, his breathing tube is pulled off by an eel. He almost drowns until

the incharge pulls him out of the water on time. Lockhart breathes a sigh of relief and complains

about the eels but to his astonishment, they have disappeared from the water.

Lockhart then returns to his room and goes through Pembroke’s file. Right then,

when he looks through the window, he notices a man taking a patient into the former church.

The next morning, Lockhart asks his historian friend; Watkins about the church but she doesn’t

know what it is used for now. Instead, she tells him that he was right about the Baron

and his sister’s illicit affair. However, the villagers didn’t burn the place down because

of that reason. It turns out that the Baron was performing sick and gruesome medical experiments

on his peasants. The farmers started finding disfigured human bodies dumped in their fields

dried up like the mummies of Egypt. Fearing that they might be next, the residents of the

village got together and killed the royal couple brutally. Once Victoria finishes saying the story,

Lockhart figures out that the Baron was probably looking for a cure to treat the

sick Baroness. Suddenly, a male nurse appears and whisks Watkins away for her “treatment”.

Following this, Lockhart wanders around the place until he notices Hannah riding her bike.

This gives him an idea. He asks her to show him around the town, and in exchange, he will give

her a ballerina toy. Hannah, who appears to be a kid mentally, agrees without hesitation.

After a long and fun ride, they stop at a local tavern for some food. To Lockhart’s delight,

he finds Enrico there. It turns out the driver also survived the crash and he was given a new

car by the wellness spa. The reason, however, for this kind gesture was never specified.

Meanwhile, Lockhart gets to know Hannah over some beers. She reveals that her mother died

in a fire when she was young and that her father will come for her when she gets cured. She also

lets him borrow some of her vitamins. Lockhart then leaves Hannah at the bar to visit Pieter,

the only doctor in town. Although Pieter is a vet, he looks at Pembroke’s medical file

and reveals that his teeth are falling out, probably due to chronic dehydration. This

puzzles Lockhart as the spa makes its patients drink ample amounts of water. He connects it to

the Baron's experiments and the dried bodies that were found in the field. It is believed the baron

was burned alive 200 years ago but Lockhart finds it strange that people are flocking to the spa,

looking for a cure, something the baron was looking for his sick wife. Pieter reveals that

her sickness was actually infertility. He then excuses himself to aid a dying cow. It turns

out the cow fell sick after drinking sewage water from the spa. He cuts the

poor animal’s stomach open, and shockingly, a stillborn calf and some eels spill out.

Lockhart then returns to the bar and calls his boss back in New York. To his astonishment,

he learns that Volmer had never informed his superiors about the accident. The boss then

orders Lockhart to return to New York with Pembroke within the next 24 hours.

Enraged, Lockhart confronts Hannah and asks her why no one is allowed to leave the spa. He also

inquires about Pembroke’s whereabouts and the blue bottle vitamin. The shy girl obviously won’t

answer any of it, and in a fit of rage, Lockhart gets into a fight with a patron. Unfortunately,

things soon turn south and Lockhart is about to be killed, but Volmer arrives in the nick

of time and saves him. Without making a fuss, he then returns to the spa with the two patients.

Later that night, Lockhart again sees the staff moving patients into the church. His tooth also

starts to fall out and he reports it at the reception. When the nurse goes to fetch him

some medicine, he goes through her file and locates Pembroke's room. On his way there,

Lockhart comes across Watkins. He tells her that the Baron’s experiments are happening

again and in return, she reveals that the baroness wasn’t infertile because

she was pregnant at the night of the wedding. Before she was burned alive,

the baby was cut out of her womb and thrown into an aquifer, but it survived.

Later, Lockhart finds the room where Pembroke is supposed to be staying. To his shock,

the old CEO and several other patients have been kept inside water tanks. Lockhart tries to free

Pembroke but without success. Suddenly, Volmer arrives there and catches him in

the act. As a punishment, he straps Lockhart down and drills a hole in his front tooth.

In the next scene, Lockhart somehow escapes from the spa and heads to town with Enrico.

He goes straight to the local police station and reports all of Volmer’s experiments. Soon,

the evil director is called into the station and Lockhart accuses him of

continuing Baron’s experiments and killing Pembroke. However, Volmer instead accuses

him of buying into Watkins’ conspiracy theories. He then calls Pembroke inside,

revealing that the CEO is alive and well. Puzzled by the whole incident, Lockhart

assumes that he was hallucinating earlier, so he voluntarily returns to the spa with Volmer.

Later, he undergoes several treatments, because of which he slowly begins to act and think like

Pembroke. He starts believing he is not well and that must stay for a cure. However, one day,

as Lockhart is writing a note to his employers, he suddenly has a moment of clarity. He breaks

a glass and uses one of its shards to cut open his cast. To his shock, Lockhart learns that his

leg was never broken. He then breaks open the gate to the church and ventures inside. There,

he finds Volmer’s laboratory, where he conducts his experiments. Lockhart also finds an

underground area with a pool where dead bodies are dumped and fed to eels. One of those dead

bodies happens to be Mrs. Watkins. Apparently, she knew too much for her own good. Suddenly,

Lockhart is discovered by a worker, but he manages to neutralize him before running away.

Meanwhile, Hannah is using the pool and she has her first period. Soon, Eels start

swimming near her in a perfect circle. For some reason, they don’t harm her at all. However,

Hannah panics and immediately gets out of the pool. She starts running through the rooms

until she runs into Lockhart. The latter tries to explain what’s going on but a frightened Hannah

hits him and runs away. Following this, she approaches Volmer, who is having dinner with

his patients. Lockhart also follows her and shouts at the top of his lungs that

Volmer is a liar and that he is deliberately making everyone sick by contaminating their

water. Unfortunately, the patients don’t believe him and instead gang up on him.

Lockhart passes out and later, wakes up locked in a chamber. Soon, Volmer approaches him and

starts revealing everything. He mentions that the eels only live for a few years but in the spa’s

aquifer, they live for as long as 300 years. But for humans, this same water is considered toxic,

which explains why most of the patients are falling sick. However, centuries ago,

the baron found out that a proper filtration process could turn the water drinkable for

even humans. This process was not a normal one though, as the filters were live humans,

who had to go through a great deal of pain. The Baron obviously didn’t care about any of it,

so he sacrificed hundreds of unwilling peasants, until he was killed by the angry mob.

After revealing all this, Volmer forces a tube down Lockhart’s throat,

through which the creepy eels enter his stomach. They then filter out the

‘vitamins’ from his digestive system, which apparently makes one immortal.

Following this, Lockhart has his teeth fixed and he appears to be changed just

like the rest of the patients, stuck in a delusion that he is unwell.

Meanwhile, Volmer gives Hannah a new dress and marries her. Now that she has experienced

her first period, he wants to copulate with her and continue their bloodline.

Back in his room, Lockhart again has a moment of clarity when he goes through Watkins’ notes. He

finds a portrait that was taken a while after the fire. He breaks the portrait and lo and behold,

he notices the man with bandages holding hands with a little girl. She is none other than Hannah.

It turns out Volmer is the baron and Hannah is his daughter. He somehow survived the fire,

and lived for 2 centuries disguised as different personalities. All this while,

he continued his experiments on the guise of running a wellness spa. He killed innocent people,

extracted the vitamins from their digestive systems, and consumed it to remain immortal.

He also gave it to Hannah, and this is the reason why she considers herself ‘special’.

In the next scene, Volmer brings her to a room and tries to do bad things to her. Fortunately,

Lockhart arrives there just in time to stop him. This infuriates Volmer and he finally reveals his

scarred face. He then attacks Lockhart, but the latter ducks and sets the room on fire.

In no time, the fire spreads toward the rest of the castle. Lockhart tries to free Hannah,

but Volmer attacks him and drags him to the edge of the eel pool in an attempt to finish him off.

However, Hannah, who at this point has realized that her father is a monster, somehow frees

herself and rushes to rescue Lockhart. Just in time, she strikes Volmer with a shovel and shoves

him into the pool, making him eel food. Lockhart and Hannah then escape just as the patients and

staff flee the burning castle. They take Hannah's bike and ride away into the dead of the night.

On the road, the duo runs into Lockhart’s bosses, who have arrived to check up on

the situation. They ask Lokhart about Pembroke but he tells them that the old

man is gone. They then tell him to get in the car, but he refuses. The movie ends as

Lockhart continues riding away into the night, with a sinister grin on his face.