At the uppermost level, corporate culture has taken a turn for the New Agey. Silicon Valley has amply parodied the recent fad of nebulously defined spiritualism among the top players in the start-up world, where CEOs journey into the desert for days at a time to trip on ayahuasca and come up with a name for their newly integrated media vertical, or whatever. Corporate types have begun to act like Burning Man attendees, and with his upcoming psychological thriller A Cure for Wellness, Gore Verbinski puts a horrifying spin on this spreading trend.

Dane DeHaan stars as a ladder-climbing young executive whose superiors task him with a mission most sensitive: the company’s founder has retreated to a shady-sounding “wellness center” in the Alps, and someone’s got to go locate him, straighten the guy out, and get him to return to civilization. (Think Apocalypse Now, but with Google instead of the U.S. military.) But the methods employed at this experimental facility are a bit more out-there than DeHaan feels comfortable with; the droplets dabbed on tongues and full-water-immersion sensory deprivation rightly give him the heebie-jeebies. Unfortunately for him, his instincts are dead-on. Something’s afoot in this cuckoo’s nest, and it can’t stay secret for much longer.

Verbinski took a public flogging after his last feature, 2013’s revival of The Lone Ranger, belly-flopped and lost millions, but it’s good to see the director returning to his roots. His adaptation of The Ring was perhaps the only entry in the early-’00s wave of Americanized J-horror remakes that did right by the original (sorry, The Grudge) and it appears A Cure for Wellness will draw on his same skill for supremely discomfiting psycho-horror. Suicide, cult rituals, archaic torture instruments, and various other Shutter Island-ish delights figure prominently into the enigmatic trailer, which presents A Cure for Wellness as one of the first exciting prospects on the 2017 moviegoing calendar. (But for pete’s sake, yet another narcotized cover of a pop song? Neato pun, a sedated-sounding version of “I Wanna Be Sedated” in the trailer for a movie about sedation, but the schtick has long since gotten old.)

Look out for the release on February 17, 2017, and do try to keep your wits about you.

More From 97.7 KCRR