FANTASIA25 REVIEW: The Well [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 91 minutes
Studio: Vortex Media / XYZ Films
Director(s): Hubert Davis
Writer(s): Kathleen Hepburn & Michael Capellupo / Hubert Davis & Michael Capellupo (story)

I try not to remember before.

Like most post-apocalyptic thrillers, civilization as we know it has ended in Hubert Davis’ The Well. A mysterious illness took over and infiltrated all natural waterways. One sip from a river of what still appears like fresh water and you’re dead within twenty-four hours. First comes the fatigue. Then the skin lesions. So, newcomers to any government camp or makeshift shanty town know to strip and prove their health. From there it’s just a matter of hoping the community you’ve entered can be trusted to have the group’s wellbeing in mind rather than a selfish leader looking to be the last person on Earth. Because being lucky to get a thimble of water a day ensures greed becomes an easy sin to embrace.

It’s why Kathleen Hepburn and Michael Capellupo’s script introduces the Devine family first. Sarah (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) and her parents (Joanne Boland’s Elisha and Arnold Pinnock’s Paul) live deep in the forest on her grandparents’ old land. Hidden beneath a leaf-covered tarp in the backyard is a well. If they empty a bucket a day, they can keep around a week’s worth of water stored for drinking, eating, and any potential emergencies. The trio survives off the land otherwise and Paul tells Sarah stories she missed by not having school. Sometimes they’ll even reminisce about the days before infection took hold, but never about the brother whose tragic end has her wondering if the wrong child died.

As fate and narrative conflict would have it, a stranger stumbles onto their property days before their water pump breaks. Despite initial skepticism, this young man (Idrissa Sanogo’s Jamie) proves himself to be a figure from their past and someone who knows where to find the materials necessary to bring the well back online. The past is the past, though. Yes, it makes sense that Paul’s plan might be outdated when compared to Jamie’s alternative considering he’s been roaming much further than them, but can he be trusted? Thirst and a mortality laid bare can turn even the closest of souls against each other under certain circumstances and the Devine’s well is too big a secret to risk on hope.

So, let it be subterfuge. Let Jamie take us through the forest so we can experience what else is out there via Sarah’s tag-along. It’s about paranoia now. Manipulation. It’s meeting kindly people like Wanda (Natasha Mumba), Milly (Noah Lamanna), and Gabriel (Sheila McCarthy), yet being uncertain about whether their smiles are genuine or a façade to draw you closer before an attack. Because Jamie knows these people and even he sets ground rules for Sarah to follow his lead and not give any real details about who she is or where she’s from. It’s one thing to trust someone in power to keep you alive for the price of fealty. It’s another to pretend they wouldn’t turn on you the second their control becomes threatened.

Add Gabriel’s brother Walter (Steven McCarthy) to the mix and allegiances are quickly exposed to combat any suspicious behavior. Sarah is nothing if not suspicious regardless of the hard to believe story about Jamie just happening across her alone in the woods. Not to mention that he has been gone long enough himself for them to assume he had reason not to return. What’s the game then? Can their dwindling water supply afford another mouth? Suddenly, each of them is on-edge waiting for the other shoe to drop. Will Sarah and Jamie unleash their dastardly plan? Will Gabriel’s flock swarm and set an example by punishing the newcomer? Will Paul, desperate to find his missing daughter, find them?

The Well doesn’t necessarily travel new road within the sub-genre (it wasn’t too long ago that It Comes at Night proved a contemporary high-water mark), but it executes the template effectively. Pierre-Dixon and McCarthy are a huge part of this since their respective traits of unwavering compassion and sweetly callous pragmatism create a perfect contrast with which to balance the drama. Because while it is fear that keeps these people under Gabriel’s foot, they’ve been in survival mode too long to admit it. They label it loyalty. Service. They’ve only experienced worse at the previous camp and can’t fathom better. Not until Sarah arrives with a purity of kindness that reminds them another way still exists.

That revelation demands Davis and company provide a conveniently cruel encounter to shake the tree in a way that could force them all to bend their heads lower as easily as embolden them. It’s abrupt but necessary. So too are Paul’s exploits. These aspects overtly set the stage for what’s to come—a climactic moment no less resonant for its obviousness—and make it so the whole hinges on Sarah’s emotionally charged, two-pronged coming-of-age and survival journey. Everything else works towards giving her the strength to show mercy, trust the unknown, and allow hope’s potential liabilities to overcome paranoia’s dubious security. And the film looks to remind us to aspire to be the martyr whose sacrifice saves another rather than the killer quick to sacrifice another for themselves.