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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of A Cure for Wellness (Benjamin Wallfisch)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're a sucker for gorgeously alluring, lyrical
themes of sadness and foreboding in your horror scores, this one
strikingly accessible for much of its length.
Avoid it... if you tire of horror scores that dissolve into abrasive electronic effects and other stock techniques in their most frightful passages, Benjamin Wallfisch needlessly abandoning his music's outstanding, waltz-driven personality for cheap thrills.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
A Cure for Wellness: (Benjamin Wallfisch) Despite
the immense pre-release hype generated for the Gore Verbinski film,
2017's horror romp A Cure for Wellness earned the distinction of
suffering one of the worst box office collapses in theatrical history.
Its sudden disappearance from screens after much initial puffery
followed surprising rejection by audiences and critics who failed to
find much interest in the plot and its length despite lovely, gothic
imagery. A sickly twisted version of 1994's A Road to Wellville,
the movie postulates that people uncared for by others gravitate to a
castle-like sanitarium in the Swiss Alps that focuses on healing through
unusual water therapy. The doctor running the facility is, of course, a
madman seeking everlasting life through the ingestion of water sweat
from his clientele after they are fed particularly special eels. When
the CEO of a big corporation gets lost to this sanitarium, a young
executive is tasked with retrieving him, only to find himself trapped in
the ghastly experiments of the doctor and struggling to learn how to
escape with a singular teenage girl who happens to be key to the
doctor's plans. Gore fetishists, especially those intrigued by horrific
dental scenes, appreciated A Cure for Wellness, though there's
also plenty of dark religious connotations and more than enough incest
and rape elements to keep the perverts happy. While the film either
bored or grossed out audiences, it did provide multitudes of eye and ear
candy, and the latter is aided significantly by Benjamin Wallfisch's
gothic and often intoxicating score. Verbinski had replaced Alan
Silvestri with Hans Zimmer as his regular collaborator in the early
2000's, and it's most likely that Zimmer recommended the talented
English composer and promising Remote Control Productions ghostwriter to
the director for this assignment. Wallfisch was in the process of
establishing himself as a capable and unusually excelling horror genre
composer at the time, his music for the such films striving to find
balance between wretched dissonant textures as required and romantically
alluring suspense and drama that typically wasn't. In these regards, he
was writing in the 2010's what Jerry Goldsmith and Christopher Young had
once provided stylistically for the industry.
The foundational approach Wallfisch uses with A Cure for Wellness retains that mould of supplying creepy, lyrical melodicism amongst sheer horror techniques. The work sounds familiar to his Lights Out score at about the same time but more mature and grandiose, standing as among the composer's best career horror or suspense entries. Much of this attraction is caused by the fact that the film has overwhelmingly European, gothic sensibilities and demanded a classically-inclined component to its soundscape, including themes that are predominantly waltz-based. The first half of the score is particularly engaging in its tonal accessibility, Wallfisch focusing on sadness and mystery in these passages and retaining a certain amount of grace in these portions' outward menace as well. Few composers of his generation are writing such brutally gorgeous music for these scenarios, and expect half an hour of hauntingly lovely and genuinely exciting, symphonically-inclined highlights. The instrumental palette isn't foreign to the composer, but its organic specialties are particularly effective. Piano and two solo voices (mainly a young female lead) are vital components, and while the use of innocent wordless vocals from a child have been a staple of horror films for decades, they flourish here. The composer also applies glassy tones that well match the watery imagery of the film. This usage includes glockenspiel, vibraphone, and/or marimbas in "Magnificent, Isn't It" and "Volmer Institut," and synthetics and marimbas form a post-modern sound in "Waiting." The religious element is reinforced by highly varied choral layers from two performance ensembles, most obviously contributing in the quietly apocalyptic scope of "The Rite." As expected for Wallfisch, electronic elements do eventually begin to play a bigger role in the score as it progresses into pure horror. An electric guitar figures in "Lockhart's Letter," and synthetic effects crash the score in the latter half of "Feuerwalzer." Standard horror dissonance textures take until "Terrible Darkness" to prevail, resorting to unlistenable The Invisible Man attack noise distortions by "Lipstick." The orchestra does try to exert itself in these passages, having a more organic impact on the suspense of "Zutritt Verboten," though Wallfisch can't seem to resist blasting inelegantly in "There's Nothing Wrong With You People." Thematically, A Cure for Wellness is absolutely dominated by two primary identities, though the composer somewhat abandons these ideas in the action cues during the final third of the story, which is a massive shame. He largely replaces them with electronic pulse effects that have no hint of the score's prior elegance. The aforementioned "There's Nothing Wrong With You People" cue is a perfect example of a scene that needed Wallfisch's waltz material in counterintuitively sickening applications synchronized to the doctor's clientele standing up in response to the lead executive's speech of revelation and, essentially, doing the zombie routine. When the composer does reference these themes, however, A Cure for Wellness is at its best in context and on album. (The Mirel Wagner cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated" tacked onto the album is not related to Wallfisch's melodic core.) The two primary themes represent Hannah, the girl, and Volmer, the doctor, and their ideas intermingle as necessary to reflect their bizarre familial relations dating back centuries. Wallfisch has mentioned that Hannah's theme was an early creation in the process, meant to feel like a secretive lullaby and utilizing an obvious young girl's vocals with solitude and beauty. Hypnotically rising three-note sequences on strings underneath help suggest the connections to the waltz formations of the other themes. The idea hits you immediately in "Hannah and Volmer" from the solo girl's voice, joined soon by piano and a choir in increasing layers. A great secondary sequence for the theme at 0:42 on piano is extremely elegant but mysteriously elusive. The solo girl's voice returns at 0:38 into "Nobody Ever Leaves," the choir picking up only the chords of the theme to eerily close out the cue. The idea does receive fascinating renditions in different shades, translated to compelling brass and string desperation at 1:07 into "Feuerwalzer." It opens "Magnificent, Isn't It" on glockenspiel and vibraphone, its secondary phrases offering some fleeting warmth at 0:45 under increasing choir. Hannah's theme returns with huge gusto for the ensemble at 1:39 into "Actually I'm Feeling Much Better," a highlight of the score, and keenly joins "Clearly He's Lost His Mind" at 1:54 partway into the melody on piano, the girl's vocals returning to close the cue. After disappearing in full performances for the climax of the story, the theme recurs on piano at 2:33 into "Volmer's Lab," and the girl's voice appropriately returns to wrap the score and offer a somewhat cyclical, unresolved finish. Often battling and prevailing over Hannah's theme in A Cure for Wellness is the representation of Volmer, a dark, unresolved waltz formation with more than enough evil and fantasy in character. This theme receives more intriguing manipulation and fragmentary applications throughout the work, debuting in full at 2:01 into "Hannah and Volmer" on subdued but ominous strings. The solo boy's voice performing the theme at 2:36 is outstanding, and tortured variants of the melody form a great secondary sequence at 3:09 before the cue closes with a viola solo carrying the theme for a sense of dignity on the part of the sanitarium. The chords of the idea open "Nobody Ever Leaves," its tentative melody joining on piano at 0:11 and only barely informing the choir in the middle of "The Rite." It's twisted into a classically formal waltz for the dancing of the latter cue, while fragments become pure horror at 0:08 into "Feuerwalzer" before it devolves into it ragingly angry action mode at 1:30 and 2:09. Volmer's theme interrupts Hannah's theme at 1:48 into "Magnificent, Isn't It" with determination and charges into thriller territory in the massive "Actually I'm Feeling Much Better," both exemplary performances. The idea turns futuristically synthetic by 0:24 into "Our Thoughts Exactly," this style very slightly reprised in "Waiting." The waltz's chords alone open "Volmer's Lab" whimsically before the theme haunts a solo piano, the increasing pace and intensity of background layers suggesting that the story is not truly over. This theme carries a variant specifically for dancing and Volmer's past, applied as a source-like waltz in the second half of "The Rite" and built out of Volmer's thematic progressions. This usage carries over to more forbidding shades at the outset of "Feuerwalzer." A standalone highlight of A Cure for Wellness is Wallfisch's lone, marginally cheery theme for freedom. This motif is gorgeously defined in the first half of "Bicycle," a strikingly optimistic moment compared to the rest of the score, with fantastic bass chord shifts under rambling piano and James Newton Howard violin rhythms; hints of Volmer's influence over this theme's hope are suggested by its end. The same chords and enthusiasm carry over to the false hope of "Volmer Institut," with outstanding interaction between rambling piano figures and other layers in that cue. Overall, the score does devolve into abrasive, questionable horror techniques in its final third, but the remainder is melodically intoxicating. The sound mix may not be quite as dynamic as that of later Wallfisch scores in the genre, but the CD album for this score likely disappeared from the market due in part to the music's uniquely dignified and lyrical personality. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 49:51
* performed by Mirel Wagner
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a note from the director.
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