It takes some chutzpah to start a story in the sterile boardrooms and status-clawing world of Wall Street and end it with a gothic macabre grand guignol that has as much in common with the creepy ambiguity of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution as it does with most mainstream American cinema. There are flashes of icky Cronenbergian body horror; parallels with Park Chan-wook’s Stoker and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, but a lack of pacing and focus defuses the meticulously styled atmosphere. However, if nothing else, Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness is the weirdest thing to come out of Hollywood in a long time.

Dane DeHaan, probably the most authentically unhealthy-looking movie star currently working, is an astute choice for the role of Lockhart, the soul-sick young executive who has traded his ethics for a shortcut to professional success. A dodgy deal catches up with him and he is offered the chance to redeem himself – all he has to do is travel to a “wellness retreat” in Switzerland and bring his company’s chief executive back to New York to preside over a deal. This proves to be a tougher assignment than he anticipated. No one leaves the castle on the hill.

This is a technically impressive film, particularly in terms of the production design. DeHaan’s sun-starved skin tone chimes with the duck-egg blue of the institution walls; the building itself is a warning, all bristling turrets and aggressive crenellations. The sound is also well used – Lockhart finds himself deep in the rumbling guts of the building, beset by groans and gurgles he can’t quite place.

Jason Isaacs is great fun as Dr Heinrich Volmer, presiding over the institution with velvety menace; Mia Goth is suitably unearthly as Volmer’s “special case”, Hannah. But all the style and slithering horror is not enough to glue together a plot that favours atmosphere over coherence and overstays its welcome by at least 30 minutes.