Godard said all you needed to make a film was a girl and a gun. True enough, but new thrilller The Well goes one better by adding a properly hissable villain to the mix.
In this slow-burn eco-thriller, where water is dangerously contaminated, a girl named Sarah (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon, excellent) lives off-grid with her parents, surviving thanks to a hidden well. When the water filter begins to fail, just after a mysterious young man is found in the woods, she leaves home with him in search of help at the man’s encampment. It turns out that camp is led by Sheila McCarthy’s Gabriel, who offers warmth with a hard edge and quietly asserts control over a fragile community under the guise of sanctuary. Her performance gives the film its sharpest angles, anchoring a story built on slow escalation and uneasy alliances.
Director Hubert Davis, working in narrative fiction for the first time, keeps the focus tight and the mood ominous. There’s no bombast here, only rusted containers, dead leaves, and the creeping dread of dependency. It’s also great to see a diverse lead cast in a film that isn’t focused on race issues.
Like other post-collapse thrillers Into the Forest and The Survivalist, The Well strips back the genre to its essentials. The stakes are personal, the world is small, and every gesture carries weight. It may move slowly and wrap up a little too neatly, but The Well wrings exquisite tension from its limited resources and scenario, and effectively paints a world where the people are no more trustworthy than the water.
The Well played the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 21.
Whitlock&Pope 