Summary

• Lockhart discovers Dr. Volmer's dark secrets, involving immortality and sinister experiments, at the Swiss Alps wellness spa.
• The eels in A Cure for Wellness are more than creatures - they play a key role in extending life and the dark practices at the spa.
• The film's ending reveals a deeper message about modern society's obsession with wealth, power, and self-destructive behaviors.

A Cure for Wellness' ending explained how an evil scientist manipulated his town and own family for years before finally being brought down. Directed by Gore Verbinski (The Ring), A Cure for Wellness is a story about a Wall Street upstart named Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) who is sent to retrieve his missing boss from an isolated health spa (The Volmer Institute) in the Swiss Alps, only to find himself injured and confined to the increasingly-sinister "wellness center" himself as a patient.

It quickly unfolds into a psychological thriller, a dreamlike "gaslighting" melodrama, a murder mystery, a gothic horror film, and ultimately a science-fiction monster movie. As Lockhart learns more about the mysterious Dr. Heinreich Volmer (Jason Isaacs) and the seemingly innocent Hannah (Mia Goth), he realizes the health spa has a devious purpose, and there is a chance he never gets out alive. By the end, A Cure for Wellness adds on shocks, surprises, and enthusiastic gross-out gore.

What Happens In A Cure For Wellness' Ending

Lockhart Learns The Doctor Is Over 200 Years Old

It was revealed during the A Cure for Wellness ending that Dr. Heinreich Volmer, though introduced as the unconventional head of the wellness spa, is actually a medically immortal Swiss Baron and mad scientist supposedly executed 200 years prior. The Institute was the castle of a notoriously mad Baron who fell in forbidden love with his own sister - who was said to have been stricken with an incurable illness. Seeking to cure her, he began conducting unnatural medical experiments.

This resulted in the discovery of seemingly "mummified" corpses; both siblings were burned alive, and the original castle was mostly destroyed. Volmer has been kept alive and seemingly ageless thanks to a vitamin-based curative potion that he and his staff/followers have been creating by manipulating the bodies of the spa's largely wealthy patients. The "illness" his sister suffered from was infertility, and he'd found a cure. His sister had become pregnant, but in the attack, the child was forcefully aborted and drowned in the underground spring.

Hannah is his similarly slow-aging daughter, born at the moment of his supposed execution.

The mysterious young patient, Hannah, is his similarly slow-aging daughter, born at the moment of his supposed execution. The eels and the patients had been positioned into an (artificially-induced) symbiotic life cycle that was the actual source of Volmer's fountain-of-youth "vitamins," primarily by being fed to one another. However, she does not know the true nature of their relationship. When Lockhart learns the truth, he kills Volmer and helps Hannah escape to start a new life in the real world.

What Was Volmer Planning?

Volmer Wants A "Pure Master Race"

Volmer is keeping Hannah on a managed dose of the youth elixir in order to (gradually) age her into adulthood. The ultimate goal is to pick up where he left off with her mother (his sister), to father a Master Race of inbred genetically superior supermen. The only reason he hasn't started already is that, while she's technically "of age," all this biological tampering has slowed the onset of puberty - and, therefore, her ability to bear children.

Gore Verbinski was influenced by the 1924 Thomas Mann novel, The Magic Mountain (via /Film).

What sets things in motion is Lockhart as meeting a boy (roughly) her age and flirting with him (and, less advisedly, some local tough guys at a bar in town) appears to jump-start Hannah's pubescence. She gets her first period shortly after trekking with him to town so he can inquire about smuggled medical records, which Volmer and his cult-like followers take as a cue to stage another big wedding ceremony, followed by a decidedly non-consensual consummation from which Lockhart attempts to rescue her in the big ending.

The Eels

The Creatures Extend The Life Of The Powerful

Eels are the big nightmare-imagery signifier in A Cure For Wellness. Lockhart hallucinates (or maybe not) being attacked by a swarm of them while floating in a sensory deprivation tank. He even has a vision of Hannah reclining naked in a bathtub full of them. The creatures seem to be "haunting" the plumbing of The Institute, slithering in and out of bathroom fixtures. It turns out Volmer has an old-fashioned mad scientist lab in the aquifer caverns where he dissects and studies them intensely.

These are no ordinary eels - they're a unique species that breeds and lives (by the thousands) in the aquifer springs themselves. The aquifer's "holy water" is not healthy for human consumption - but it extends the lifespan of the eels to over 300 years. The Baron had sought to extract whatever made this reaction possible for human use by forcing live eels down the throats of human subjects and then extracting concentrated liquid from said subject's bodies over time to create his life-prolonging "vitamin" elixir.

The "spa" concept is Volmer's means of not repeating his Baron-era mistakes.

This explains the "mummified" bodies from 200 years ago when the villagers attacked the castle and the redacted medical records showing patients suffering from chronic dehydration in Volmer's time. The "spa" concept is Volmer's means of not repeating his Baron-era mistakes. Instead of drawing attention by kidnapping people, he's taking advantage of the existential angst of 21st Century titans of capitalism to keep them consuming the aquifer's "miracle water" and becoming vitamin factories willingly as part of the "treatment" they've been gaslit into believing they require.

The Real Meaning Of A Cure For Wellness' Ending

The Wealthy Are Unwell & It Is Their Own Doing

In the broad strokes, the film makes it pretty clear this is all meant to be a metaphor for an over-medicated, over-analyzed modern life. Specifically, the idea that The Institute's wealthy "patients" would rather believe in a mad scientist's diagnosis of imagined physical ailment (and the bizarre treatments it supposedly requires) than ask whether it's the world they inhabit, the culture they create, or their own actions are really making them feel unwell.

This narrative subtext is clearer when, at the climax, Lockhart is struck by a sudden realization of just how much he'd been listening to Volmer's pronouncements himself and cuts off his cast - discovering that his leg was never actually broken. But it's also there in Volmer's mad quest to "cure" his inability to create an inbred master race at the expense of his victims. In a sense, the final message of A Cure For Wellness would appear to be that the corporations are unwell, not the patients.

How The A Cure For Wellness Ending Was Received

Reviews Were Mostly Negative For The Movie & Its Ending

A Cure for Wellness is a rare movie whose critics' ratings and audience scores are the same on Rotten Tomatoes. Both have the film at a 42% rating, which is considered just on the rotten side. However, many recent audience reviews are more positive though the ending remains a problem for many people.

One positive review wrote, "The ending was a tad disappointing. Still, it's very much worth the watch." However, another reviewer wrote, "I have heard many complain about the ending to this film, but to be perfectly honest, I found the resolution to be surprisingly enjoyable."

As for the critics, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised the movie, but even he felt the ending left a little to be desired. "At the end, Verbinski has to fudge the issue of whether Lockhart has ed the hypnotized ranks, but the movie’s operatic claustrophobia makes its mark," he wrote. "Cult status beckons." On the other side of things, Leah Pickett of Chicago Reader was disappointed in A Cure for Wellness and said about the ending, "[Verbinski's] movie seems to last forever and, when it finally ends, leaves a sour aftertaste of overproduced, overblown schlock."

With that in mind, there was one critic who felt the movie worked great despite the ending. Jordan Hoffman of Vanity Fair wrote, "When the movie was done (and the audience was groaning), I came away just slightly entertained. Watching a crafty filmmaker swing for the fences is commendable—even when the result is near-total collapse."