JP Nunez
When most hardcore horror fans think of Italian genre cinema, they probably call to mind famous gialli like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Blood and Black Lace, but if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll see that this amazing country has also given us some of the best witch movies of all time. Most notably, Mario Bava made his feature directorial debut with the vampire/witch hybrid Black Sunday, and Dario Argento’s most famous film is Suspiria. That’s a legit pedigree, so when I heard about the new Italian witch movie The Well, I was instantly intrigued. Sure, I didn’t expect it to live up to those stone-cold classics, but I was still excited to see what it would add to this fantastic legacy.
The Well was directed and co-written by Federico Zampaglione, and it stars Lauren LaVera, Claudia Gerini, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Taylor Zaudtke, Linda Zampaglione, Jonathan Dylan King, Lorenzo Renzi, Gianluigi Calvani, Yassine Fadel, Melanie Gaydos, Stefano Martinelli, and Courage Oviawe. In the film, Lisa is an American art restorer who travels to Italy to restore a centuries-old painting for a rich duchess, but soon after she arrives, she begins to have terrifying nightmares.
These nightmares leave the poor woman pretty shaken up, and when the duchess’s daughter tells her the painting is cursed, she starts to have second thoughts about the entire project. At the same time, two scientists and their Italian interpreter are also working in that village, and a mysterious figure kidnaps them and locks them in a dungeon containing an ominous well. At first, this side plot seems entirely unconnected to Lisa’s story, but as The Well goes on, these horrific narrative threads eventually merge into a single witchy nightmare.
If you’re a horror connoisseur, one of the names in this movie’s cast might’ve stood out to you: Lauren LaVera. She was the final girl in Terrifier 2, and if you’ve seen that film, it should come as no surprise that she’s excellent here as well. She plays Lisa, and she’s hands down the best aspect of The Well.
You’ll believe every line LaVera utters and every move she makes, so you can’t help but buy into her character right from the get-go. To take just a few examples, when the horror kicks into gear, you’ll believe that this poor woman really is scared out of her mind, and when Lisa has to be brave to fight the evil she’s stumbled upon, you just about can’t help but raise your fist and root her on. LaVera is simply that good, so she almost single-handedly carries The Well from start to finish.
But that’s not the only fine performance in this film. Claudia Gerini plays the duchess who owns the bewitched painting, and she skillfully skirts the line between ladylike and suspect. She’s very polite and well-mannered, but you know there’s something much more sinister lying beneath that courteous facade. It’s a tough balance to strike, but Gerini manages to pull it off like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
On top of those two excellent performances, The Well also features some fun horror. For example, the house where Lisa has to restore the painting is a beautifully creepy gothic mansion, and when the poor woman has her nightmares, they’re genuinely horrible (in a good way!). Similarly, the dungeon where the scientists are being kept is creepy and grimy in all the best ways, and the well is home to one of the coolest humanoid monsters I’ve seen in a long time.
That being said, not all the spooky stuff in The Well works quite as well as it’s supposed to. For instance, the dungeon is guarded by a strongman in vaguely Joker-esque face paint, and this guy features a bizarre combination of ill-fitting characteristics. He moves like he’s exhausted or drugged, he acts like he has an intellectual disability, and he seems to have superhuman strength and durability.
On paper, that might not sound too bad, but on screen, he comes across as just a bit too much. The dungeon and the creature in the well are more than enough to make for an awesome horror setting, so this brute is entirely unnecessary. It feels like the movie is trying too hard, so every time this man stepped into the frame, he took me out of the experience a little bit.
Along similar lines, The Well also features some convincing gore effects, but some of them seem unnecessary. Most notably, the weird guy manning the dungeon sometimes tortures the prisoners in gratuitously sadistic ways, and there’s even a moment when a character steps on a nail for no apparent reason other than to add some more blood and gore into the mix.
Don’t get me wrong, I like gore when it’s used well, but again, these scenes make it feel like the film is just trying too hard. Blood and guts are tools filmmakers can use to make their movies better, but like anything else, they can be overused, and that’s exactly what happens here.
Thankfully though, neither of those problems is enough to ruin the film. Lauren LaVerna’s performance alone is enough to outweigh everything The Well does poorly, and when you add in the fun horror elements and Claudia Gerini’s two-faced turn as the duchess, you get a movie that’s worth a watch. Granted, this isn’t one of the best horror flicks of the year, but if you’re a hardcore genre fan, I think you’ll have a good time with it.
The Well was released in select theaters on August 9, and it’s set to hit VOD on September 3.
