Film Location of „A Cure for Wellness“: An abandoned hospital

Recently, I watched a mystery thriller named A Cure for Wellness. The film is about a guy who wakes up in a mysterious hospital after a car accident and experiences all kinds of strange things during his stay in this hospital.

Watching the movie, some of the locations, especially the scenes filmed inside the hospital, looked familiar.

It was the characteristic look of the hospital buildings and the floor pattern that caught my attention. So I looked at some older photos I took at the abandoned Beelitz Heilstätten and did some additional research that confirmed my hypothesis. A Cure for Wellness was partially filmed at the abandoned Beelitz Heilstätten, a century old and now left sanatorium for treating lung diseases.

During my research, I discovered that a part of the Beelitz-Heilstätten, especially those where a Cure for Wellness was filmed, was soon to be revitalized or torn down.

So I looked for the next possible photo tour from go2know.de and packed for a three day trip to Berlin to see and photograph the abandoned Beelitz-Heilstätten.

Table of Contents

• Know before you go
• The men's sanatorium at Beelitz Heilstätten
• Camera Apps and iPhone Photo Accessories used
• More Lost Places and Beelitz Heilstätten

Know before you go

Everything I needed for those three days fitted nicely into my carry-on compliant backpack, the Farpoint 40. I have an in-depth Osprey Farpoint 40 review here in the blog and why I specifically bought this backpack that helps me to avoid the queues at the airport. Beelitz is roughly one hour by car from Berlin and Potsdam. If you don’t want to rent a car, you can also take the train directly from Berlin. The station where you need to get off is called “Beelitz Heilstätten” (surprise!)

But please mind, that this photo spot does not exist any longer. In the past you could visit the abandoned Sanatoriums at Beelitz, where a cure for wellness was filmed, legally by booking a photo tour either from go2know.de or Photo Tours Berlin. But as a large part of the Beelitz Heilstätten were revitialized and turned ito residential homes, you can't visit this photo spot any longer.

However, a few of the abandoned buildings of the Beelitz Heilstätten have been preserved. You can experience them either from the Beelitz Heilstätten canopy walk or by guided tours that you can book via baumandzeit.de, the homepage of the Beelitz Heilstätten canopy walk.

The men's sanatorium at Beelitz Heilstätten

The film was shot inside two of the three main buildings at the men's sanatorium at the Beelitz-Heilstätten back in 2012. For the film, the ground floor and a few rooms were “renovated.” I put that in quotation marks because the renovation was mainly to paint the walls and add glass to the broken windows. Six years later, the paint already starts to peel off again, and you can see that in the next photo of a hallway that was used in the film.

Inside, they only painted those areas that would be visible in the film.

A room that supports that hypothesis is in the next photo. So probably they didn’t need the room at all and would only show the closed door. So the door was new, but the room behind was still in its decayed state. I was just wondering why the door was on the floor? Maybe someone knocked a bit hard, or they didn’t even fix the door for shooting the film?

This is a prop still left from the movie. It also has a short appearance together with actor Dane DeHaan.

And this is the dining room that you can see in the film that is set on fire at the end. Allegedly the crew did not get the permission to burn down the building. Some say because the buildings are under monument protection. Others, because a vast forest surrounds the premises.

So they rebuilt the room in the nearby Babelsberger film studio and burned it down there - and along with it an entire studio.

To be able to photograph the entire hallway, I used the Moment Fisheye Lens for iPhone and applied perspective correction using SKRWT.

You won’t see this entire hall in the film, but you’ll see the protagonist entering and leaving through one of the doors to the left. The room is the former bathhouse.

Again, to be able to fit the entire hall into the frame, I used the Moment Fisheye Lens.

You’ll also get to see the entrance area and hall a few times through the film. Compared to some other sets, the doors and room still look pretty okay, given the fact the film was shot six years ago.

Camera Apps and iPhone Photo Accessories used

Because of the sometimes tricky light in the building, I took some of these photos using one of my recommended iPhone camera Apps, ProCamera App, because of the ability to use a priority mode, where you set the ISO manually and let ProCamera choose the exposure time.

Except for the two photos for which I used the Moment Fisheye Lens, I shot all the others using the Moment Wide Lens mounted to an iPhone X. And of course, for some of the photos, like the one in the bathhouse, I also used a tripod for my iPhone.

More Lost Places and Beelitz Heilstätten

Fun Fact: There’s a German horror movie named “Heilstätten” that’s set to play in Beelitz, but was filmed at another abandoned sanatorium. Of course, I’ve visited that film location, too, and you can find more about that in the blog post about the abandoned Heilstätte Grabowsee

Beelitz Heilstätten is worth a visit! And if you don’t want to wait for one of the photo tours you can book through go2know.de, maybe visiting the Beelitz Heilstätten Canopy walk would be an option?

And finally, I have a blog post about 7 Lost Places you can visit legally or check all my posts about Lost Places in the Blog. Happy exploring (and take care!)