The box office success of the Pirates films brought Verbinski a budgetary and artistic freedom granted very few directors. The first fruit of this freedom was the notorious 2013 flop The Lone Ranger, a bloated pastiche of Hollywood Westerns that even the appearance of Johnny Depp was unable to redeem. Having learned little from the Lone Ranger fiasco, Verbinski delivers A Cure for Wellness — another pastiche, this time of Hammer Films/American International Pictures Gothic horror — with all of the visual style and self-indulgence one has come to expect, substituting startling images and creepy atmosphere for coherent storytelling.