Gore Verbinski absolutely fascinates me. Mousehunt was the first thing I ever saw from him, and I remember liking its Looney Tunes-esque humor…it felt like a Joe Dante movie. I saw most of it somewhat recently and it actually holds up, too. It’s solid. Same with the American Ring remake. That movie STILL scares me. That may very well still be his best movie; at least, in terms of tone, and the abrupt switch in tone from Mousehunt to The Ring was masterful as well. Holy shit The Ring had one of the heaviest feelings of dread I’ve ever felt in a theater (not including Dredd *slips on banana peel*). That was the one where I learned Gore Verbinski’s name. And as bloated as the sequels were, Pirates of the Caribbean is also a really solid high seas/swashbuckling/adventure film. And hey, even the rotund sequels have redeemable things in them! This shot, for one:
I can’t outright hate a movie that has shots like that in it. That’s the thing about Gore Verbinski: he’s an extremely talented filmmaker, but when he was playing in Disney’s sandbox I’d imagine he didn’t really have a ton of input into the script or in the run time of the sequels, so I feel like you can’t put the negative aspects of those films on him. He wouldn’t have had the kind of clout one would need to sass-talk the Disney Cerberus, the kind of clout that comes with, oh, say, winning an Oscar or something. Well, after the three Pirates movies he blasted an Edgar Martinez moonshot out of the stadium with Rango, which clocked in at a brisk 107 minutes and earned him a Best Animated Film Oscar. Goddamn I love Rango. You know, it kinda just hit me that the comparison I made to Joe Dante up there isn’t really far off in a more general, filmmaker sense. Gore Verbinski and Joe Dante are really similar now that I’m thinking about it.
Anyway. The news today from The Hollywood Reporter is that one of the best up and coming actors in the biz (business) Dane DeHaan (The Place Beyond The Pines – seriously, it’s so good) is joining up with Gore Verbinski for A Cure for Wellness, a “supernatural horror” film. The story is about a young man (DeHaan) who needs to travel to a remote therapeutic institute in the Swiss Alps to retrieve his boss -a patient at the facility- but when his boss disappears (five bucks says the boss was NEVER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE) the young man becomes trapped in the institute and begins to unravel its hidden memories, terrible secrets, lotsa snow, retreat into madness, etc. No TV and no beer makes Homer something something. Seriously though, it’s more than a little Shining-ish, eh? I guess you could say that’s just a haunted house movie. Is that a genre? It should be. Next to your DRAMA and your ACTION you’ve got your HORROR and next to that, you’ve got HAUNTED HOUSES. I should be running this country. It’s The Shining, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Shutter Island all rolled into one delicious cannoli of paranoia and fear. I’m with it. Also negotiating a role is Mia Goth, which I refuse to believe is not an extremely late April Fool’s prank. She was in Nymphomaniac, apparently? I’m sorry, nevermind, no, she was in Nymphomaniac: Vol. II. I’m sorry for that mix-up! /hand wank
Consider me excited for Gore Verbinski to flex his horror chops again, cause boy do we know he has them. And y’know, I still haven’t seen The Lone Ranger, and yea, it bombed at the box office, but I bet when it finally hits Netflix or whatever one day I just know I’m going to be hungover and watch the entire thing and love it and quietly curse under my breath to never trust movie website reviews ever again. Except for CHUD. You can always trust CHUD.
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