Gore Verbinski returned to the big screen in 2016 for the mysterious horror film, "A Cure for Wellness". Sadly overlooked, the hidden gem is a visual delight, boasting stunning gothic visuals and dripping with atmospheric dread. The director brought in English composer Benjamin Wallfisch, who is quickly becoming a household name in the industry. The music is delightfully dark and moody, featuring Hannah's haunting vocal melody--one of my favorite character themes of the last decade.
The original soundtrack album features a decent cover, using the teaser poster. Though it works in its minimal simplicity, for such a visually decadent film, I just had to indulge and work with several alternate pieces of artwork. The first two covers are derived from the key poster art, though there's a few variants in the top landscape. For the first, I went with a slightly more muted tone, while the second is a bit more colorful. Though not actually used in any of the official posters, I found this particular shade of yellow paired beautifully with the rest of the film's color palette, and used it frequently.
The next two posters feature Hannah hanging out in a tub with some friendly eels. I forget if this is actually seen in the film in some kind of dream sequence, or maybe just used for marketing. Either way, it's a mix of erotic and stomach-churning and hypnotic. The first is a fairly simple edit of the poster. The second used a wallpaper, and it was difficult to crop such a wide design, as well as trying to create a shadowy font effect.
The final three covers are all using still shots from the film itself--the film is so beautifully shot that almost any screen-grab could be framed. Naturally though, the usual cinematic widescreen design can be a bit tricky to crop into a square frame. The first image ended up with a bit of a Halloween-ey vibe, thanks to the green warped font, though hopefully not too garish. For the middle one, I cheated the mountains on the left a little bit (shrunk slightly and moved closer to center) to get as much of a landscape view as possible. And for the third, I went with a much more vintage and minimal text design to not distract from the panorama and give a more quaint European charm.
Enjoy, fans of the macabre, and please share if you have a particular favorite of the bunch.
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