The Well

Went the day…

The Well
Directed by Federico Zampaglione
2023 Italy
Uncork’d Entertainment

I got fed up with waiting for The Well to get any kind of cinema release here in the UK. It’s now looking unlikely and, to further inflate the crimes against filmanity this movie is a victim of, it’s apparently due to be released in the near future on UK DVD, but not in a proper Blu Ray transfer... which a film which looks as exquisite as this one so obviously needs here. Why is this country becoming a bunch of philistines when we should be, like the French, a bunch of cineastes? 

So okay, yeah, I decided to watch a free, HD, pre-streaming version of the film, if you catch my drift. I mean, I want to buy a cinema ticket and a Blu Ray of this but, it’s like the company don’t want me to spend money on their movie. Absolutely crazy stuff. I can only hope that one of the proper boutique labels like Severin or Arrow or Vinegar Syndrome pick this one up in due course and give it the proper treatment it deserves.

Okay, so this film is, to all extents and purposes, made by someone who is definitely trying to make it look like a late 1970s/80s Italian horror film (even though it almost all takes place in 1993) and, frankly, succeeding in almost every way possible. Even the plot details have a very similar feel to lots of horror films and even gialli made in that period in Italy so, if you are a fan of that particular golden age, then you really do need to see this one.

The film stars Lauren LaVera as Lisa, sent by her father (who owns a company who restore artworks to their former glory), to a chateau in Italy, in order to restore a painting belonging to a woman called Emma (played by the great Claudia Gerini, who younger, modern audiences might best remember for her turns in the first off the new Diabolik movies, reviewed here and John Wick Chapter 2 reviewed here) and her freakish daughter. On the way there, she meets up with three Americans studying the flora and fauna of a nearby forest and they agree to meet up later that week… that meeting never really happens for reasons I won’t reveal.

When Lisa arrives at her destination, she discovers the huge painting is completely smoke black due to a recent fire… but she has to uncover what lies beneath in two weeks, due to reasons made very clear at the end of the story. However, as each day goes by and more of the demonic (because, of course) painting is brought to light, Lisa begins to encounter nightmarish visions along the way. Is the painting hiding a deeper, sinister secret? Well, yeah, absolutely.

That’s as much as I’m saying about the plot but, as you would expect from a film trying to emulate the Italian horror films of the 70s/80s, it looks absolutely beautiful and the camera moves through the shots in a very controlled and slow way. There’s a lovely shot, for example, where the camera slowly moves left past a birdcage in the foreground of the shot, removing the bars from the screen as the verticals exit on the right... then the rest of the scene plays out and then the camera exits the scene with the precise opposite movement, bringing the bars back into the front of the screen. Another great shot has Emma’s daughter constantly circling around Lisa and camera moving in a circle with her. And there’s a wonderful sequence where a room so neutral and colourless it looks like it’s in monotone, is suddenly contrasted with an orange/brown room which, when Lisa enters it, is pitched against the mono room which can be seen in the huge doorway she just came through. So, yeah, the film is lovingly crafted and absolutely has the feel of those cinematic delights it’s trying to emulate.

Not to mention the level of goriness in the movie… let’s just say that this one has the same kind of eye gouging, limb lopping, gut munching, face peeling violence that would have made this an instant video nasty target if it were released in the period it’s succeeding so well at copying. Not to mention, there’s even the ‘person bends down to reveal to the audience that someone else is standing behind them’ shot which was popular for a time in films such as Argento’s Tenebrae (reviewed here) and De Palma’s Raising Cain. There are even a couple of scenes, one right at the start and one in the middle, where Lisa’s eye make up makes her look a little like Jessica Harper in Suspiria (reviewed here).

Another thing is the score by Oran Loyfer, which sounds very much like something Goblin or Bruno Nicolai or Keith Emerson or even Libra would have provided, by the time it gets to the end of the picture. It totally goes there and even features a cheesy song with lyrics pertaining to the story for the end credits. End credits which, I should add, contain a long thanks section near the finish which includes Lamberto Bava and Alan Jones among the people listed.  

So yeah, that’s me done on The Well. If this somehow gets a Blu Ray release at some point I will definitely be snapping this one up… it’s the kind of thing you might want to watch on a double bill with something like The Church, I reckon and, as I said, fans of those kinds of movies would do well to acquaint themselves with this one, for sure. All it needed was a bit of nudity and it would have been absolutely pitch perfect but, what we do get (apart from a terrible twist about the owner of the pub across from the castle, which was telegraphed pretty much from the start of the movie when you meet him) is pretty close. I loved this one.