Seeking Wellness: Suffering Through Four Movements

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for five minutes trying to figure out where to begin. As the blinding whiteness of the screen has started the rumblings of a massive headache, I may as well wing it.

Seeking Wellness isn’t a film, at least not in the traditional sense. It consists of four vignettes meant to evoke feelings of shock, horror, unease and ultimately, empathy. At times the film is a rewarding viewing experience, at other moments it tests one’s patience.

The first vignette rolls through the eyes of six static security cameras in a trauma ward. Every five seconds the image switches to another camera with no audio save for a low frequency hum. Three patients are receiving therapy, all our heavily bandaged, all are severely injured. For the first few minutes, nothing seems out of the ordinary as the action switches from the individual wards, to a cafeteria, to a medical supply closet to the receptionist desk. Just as a sense of complacency sets in, a pair of masked men burst in to the frame. The impartial cameras continue their five second lookout, as the intruders first rape the receptionist while an incapacitated patient reacts with mortal terror. The way the scene plays out leaves viewers with a feeling of helplessness, as the cameras cut from one to another at the peak of the situation, leaving it for another thirty second interval to pass before we learn how the situation resolves itself. Even after the intruders leave, the camera continues to switch feeds from one room to the next and we’re forced to see the grisly aftermath of the assaults.

Daddy's Time

As shocking and full of despair as the first segment was, the second one, titled ‘Daddy’s Time’ was the hardest for me to sit through. The scene once again almost lulls the viewer to sleep as a middle aged man narrates an old family photo slideshow to his son and daughter. It’s not until he comes upon a slide of his uncle that the comfort level plummets. Daddy tells a story of horrific abuse, but what makes his narration chilling is the matter of factness of his delivery mixed with a twinge of nostalgia. It would almost play for laughs except that the image shifts from the slideshow to the dad and his two kids on the sofa. Their body language and the fear etched on their faces was the first hint of how uneasy the rest of the scene would be. As Christmas gifts are handed out, the implication behind the box of crayons the father gives his daughter in light of the story he just related made my stomach drop.  It only gets worse as a handgun and daddy’s admission of being “tired” come into play. I found myself getting physically ill but unable to look away from the brother and sister gripping one another’s hands in terror as the scene continued.

A disclaimer I received with the screener advises the viewer to watch the film without pause from beginning to end or run the risk of lessening its impact. I’ll admit after the second vignette I needed to step away from the film for a few minutes as it had a profound and unsettling effect on me.

The last two movements are connected with the last one actually starting first. The beginning of this section does borderline on tedious, but bear with it for a bizarre exploration of a damaged psyche with a surreal and nightmarish payoff. Students are presenting their master psychology thesis and one woman’s project involves a very disturbed man. The documentary footage (and third vignette ‘Malignant Love’) she presents tells the story of Patient Twelve. After losing his girlfriend to another man, he decides e no longer wants to live, but doesn’t want to commit suicide, as he wishes to be around to reap the benefits if his ex is heartbroken and grieves for him. His solution is to give himself terminal cancer so she can tend to him on his death bed. What follows are odd, almost comical scenes of Twelve exposing himself to power lines and scraping lead paint off walls to eat by the handful. The closing moments show a sickly looking patient coughing up a storm and smiling to himself as his hair falls out in tufts. The film shifts back to the classroom and contains some of the grossest, stomach turning visuals committed to film, and I‘ll not spoil the rest (or your appetite) by going into details.  

I have to give writer/director Daniel Scheidkraut a lot of credit for this film. Yes, it’s artsy experimental cinema, and your own mileage will vary depending on your tolerance for such things. That said, we watch movies in order to become enthralled in the experience. I watch horror for many reasons. One is to be entertained, but there’s also that side that wants to be repulsed and shocked yet unable to tear myself away from the proceedings. Aside from the surreal nature of the final classroom scenes, Scheidkraut coaxes natural performances from his players, lending a realistic edge to the bizarre, almost dreamlike quality of the film. If you’re looking for a completely different experience from any other movie you see this year, seek out SEEKING WELLNESS.