Screamfest review: Graphic 'The Well' both too much, not enough

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Makeup and creature effects are about all The Well has going for it. The film, which screened at Screamfest in Los Angeles, struggles with an unwieldy mythology and a choppy narrative.

In 1993, Lisa (Laren LaVera) travels to Italy to restore a painting. She stays with Emma (Claudia Gerini) and her daughter, Giulia (Linda Zampaglione).

Meanwhile, three people Lisa met on the bus, Tony (Gianluigi Galvani), Madison (Courage Osabohine) and Tracy (Taylor Zaudtke) are abducted from their campsite. They awaken in prison cells surrounding a well.

A lumbering mute muscleman (Lorenzo Renzi) moans and grunts while he mutilates his prisoners one by one, while serving another creature (Stefano Martinelli), who appears in the prison chamber.

Lisa has frightening visions of these occurrences, and other graphic deaths, while working on the painting. She wants to leave, but there's a penalty clause in her contract that would bankrupt her family business if she doesn't complete the job.

The graphic gore and creature highlight makeup artist Federica Puglielli and Carlo Diamantini's work. Unfortunately, director Federico Zampaglione does not present the unpleasantness in an artful and interesting way like Saw or Hostel.

Therein lies the difference between macabre fun and gratuitous gore. The Well's dismemberments are elaborate and mighty convincing, but there's no dramatic build or catharsis. They're just there.

Nor are they haunting, because it's clear you're watching a prosthetic effects demonstration.

The well scenes don't measure up to the art restoration scenes, either. The latter at least seem like Lisa is a professional, caught up in a strange world with people keeping secrets from her.

Lisa gradually learns of a curse related to the painting, but that also becomes too convoluted to be scary. By the time the connections between the painting and the well are revealed, it's too overstuffed.

The Well never gets a grasp on any of its elements -- the supernatural, the monsters and the graphic violence. When individual elements are so untenable, combining all three overwhelms the film.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.