Director: Hubert Davis
Writer: Michael Capellupo, Kathleen Hepburn
Stars: Noah Lamanna, Sheila McCarthy, Joanne Boland
Synopsis: In a world where environmental collapse has left survivors to fight over the precious remaining resources, a young woman’s loyalties are tested by the arrival of a wounded man who discovers her family has a secret supply of freshwater.
Earlier this month, R.T. Thorne reinvigorated interest in Canadian genre cinema with the incredible 40 Acres, a post-apocalyptic thriller that efficiently asked cogent questions on the fate of humanity after its most precious resources were depleted due to a fungal pandemic, which led to a global food chain collapse. The film is one of the best Canadian-made genre films in years, because it puts its central group of humans first and foremost and allows us to meaningfully sit with them before Thorne goes all in on a succession of intricately shot and choreographed action sequences that rank high as some of the year’s very best.
Now, documentarian Hubert Davis, in his fiction filmmaking debut, wants to treat the same ideas Thorne developed in his character-driven drama The Well, which recently had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in the Cheval Noir section. In a way, it acts as a quasi-response to Thorne’s feature, as it basically tells the same story of a group of survivors in the Canadian wilderness who learn to live in a world where their most precious resources are depleted. In this case, it is water, a human necessity, that has become dangerous for humans to drink. It makes people terminally ill and is actively poisonous to consume.
In and of itself, the concept is fairly interesting, even if we can’t help picking apart the similarities Davis’ film has with Thorne’s. Unfortunately, the movie ends up being one of the dullest pictures of the festival, and one that seems uninterested in developing anything it presents, whether the character relationships, which take a considerable chunk of the movie, or its central thematic underpinnings related to the loss of its most precious resources.
Davis makes the gutsy decision of introducing us to its central conceit, in media res, where voiceover narration fills the audience in on what they need to know about the world they will inhabit for the next ninety minutes. After that, Davis begins to worldbuild on the fly, making us aware of what’s going on through dialogues where characters become walking and talking exposition machines, almost like an RPG where we are thrown into a world with little to no resources and begin to understand what’s going on as non-playable characters begin to explain to us the mechanics of the game, and what the player should understand.
However, this is where Davis began to lose me. The approach itself is interesting, but the overtly melodramatic, self-serious tone, where the filmmaker believes we’ll immediately be interested in what’s happening without an active connection with the protagonists, completely sinks his proposition. Who are these people? Why should we care about anyone on screen? Davis never gives us a compelling reason to, nor does he let us sit with any of the protagonists meaningfully. Instead, he prefers to meander in listless platitudes that offer very few moments of introspection or rumination. It doesn’t take long for us to check out and not give a damn about someone, or anyone, really.
The Well is also far too lethargically paced, preferring to bathe in endless, meaningless conversations instead of letting its admittedly well-captured naturalistic photography speak for itself and give the characters some room to breathe. Davis believes that we will instantly fall in love with the characters and world he presents on screen, or at least that the audience will resonate with the important message he shares, even without a hook to anchor us into the picture. It also doesn’t help that each actor ridiculously performs their respective characters, but it’s not entirely their fault.
The dialogue they are given is laughable and doesn’t sound like what any rational human being would say. It brings some unintentional hilarity, recalling M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. However, unlike that disasterpiece, there’s no active entertainment to be had in The Well. Just ninety painstakingly dull minutes of pure tedium that gives Canadian genre cinema the bad reputation it frequently gets, even if its status was improved not long ago with R.T. Thorne’s incredible 40 Acres.
In fact, you’re better off watching that movie, as its political messaging is heard loud and clear, the artistry on display is staggering (especially its gun-toting climax), the music and soundscapes are genuinely incredible, and Danielle Deadwyler once again gives one of the year’s best performances that (always) sadly go under the radar. 40 Acres will blow you away, and unless you suffer from insomnia and want to fall asleep in no time, you shouldn’t bother with The Well.
