‘A Cure for Wellness’ Trailer: Definitely Don’t Drink This Water

2016 was a hell of a year for horror, from the high-literary chills of I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House to ‘cult classic’ The Invitation to the rigorously designed colonial freakout The Witch to the stripped-down nightmare of Don’t Breathe. 2017’s already looking like it’ll be able to give this year’s chills a run for their money, though; the advance reviews for M. Night Shyamalan’s multiple-personality abduction thriller Split have been improbably positive, the trailer for Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out looks absolutely bonkers, and Gore Verbinski has given February a shot in the arm (pun extremely, shamelessly intended) with his upcoming psych ward-set feature A Cure for Wellness.

The full trailer for Verbinski’s latest debuted earlier today, and damn if it doesn’t look promising. The clip spells out the core plot beats: Dane DeHaan is a young executive sent to a mysterious "wellness center" located in a corner of the Swiss Alps. His efforts fail to bear fruit and he gets a rightly creepy vibe from the "spa," so he attempts to make a hasty getaway before a deer with a death wish runs him off the road. He’s dragged back to the spa (where he encounters a fellow patient portrayed by Mia Goth, a.k.a. P from Nymphomaniac) and subjected to all manner of extraordinary treatments, many of which seem only to drive him further into insanity. By the time he sees a little impurity in the water wiggling on his finger and realizes something’s afoot, it’s long since too late.

But moreover, this is one handsome-looking horror film. Shot by Bojan Bazelli, the cinematographer who lent this summer’s Pete’s Dragon an ethereal and earthy beauty, the photography washes out every shot with a sanitized-looking pallor that befits the subject matter perfectly. Creepy imagery — piles of teeth, tweaking seismographs, immersion in a tank of colorless fluid — becomes even more chilling with the right palette. January and February have been treated by dumping grounds for studios in past years, but Verbinski’s given audiences something to be genuinely excited about.