It's been 10 years since the last rainfall. Kendal (Haley Lu Richardson) leads a group of kids guarding one of the few functioning wells against marauding bandits. As the surrounding wells dry up, their neighbors attempt to leave only to be killed by bad guys looking to take over the entire valley.This is basically an apocalyptic western and a low budget indie. The leads are functional actors. The premise isn't that difficult. It isn't able to elevate beyond that.

The movie is set in post-apocalyptic Oregon and for some unknown reason the rain stopped falling ten years prior and the few remaining people struggle to survive as water becomes scarce.Kendal (the protagonist) hides out in an abandoned farmhouse with Dean, who's kidneys are failing. He slowly and laboriously works away at random distributor caps that Kendal brings him, trying to make them fit...something. Yes, the movie drags. Just...as...slow...as...that...As the dragging progresses the villain emerges with his many zealots who scour the valley, hunting for survivors to kill those who he claims are using his water without his "permission" (yawn).While Kendal continues to scrounge for water and supplies and searches fruitlessly for THE distributor cap to repair an old airplane (AH HA! So there WAS a reason for the distributor cap. But now we're left to guess for ourselves what's so #$%^ed important about the plane???) Throughout the movie Kendal demonstrates an impossible skill of hiding and sneaking around in a completely flat and barren desert where apparently no one can spot her running around. She goes days without water killing bad guys, running back and forth across the blistering hot sands, giving dying Dean her share of the water.And in the final triumphant fight scene, where Kendal demonstrates an impossible skill with a katana, she easily takes down a full grown man who's swinging a machete full force, clashing blade on blade, which Kendal easily matches. And then after Kendal dispatches him with not much effort suddenly Kendal can barely fight another girl that Kendal F@#$%ing SHOT with a shotgun.The movie is obviously just feminist orgasmatron wet dream.Dumb. Just flat stupidly dumb.

For a post-apocalyptic movie, The Well has the environment right. It's entirely set in rustic desert settlement where water has become a rare commodity. The lead female character is certainly identifiable, and Haley Hu Richardson's good performance makes it easy to root for the girl survivor. However, the narrative might be lacking and some parts of the movie are irritatingly flawed such as the hazy scene when it's dark and its increasing number of inconsistent details towards the end.The world is suffering from perpetual dry season as the rain stops pouring. This unfortunate calamity has changed the city into just a few barren houses and the people into vagrants. Kendal (Haley Hu Richardson) is one of the survivors and she has to deal with the barren wasteland as well as some of its volatile occupants. While the lead is pretty good on her own, majority of the supporting characters might not be appealing to audiences.The film intents to draw sympathy as Kendal is struggling for her survival as she ventures into the real equipped with boldness and occasional luck. The film succeeds on doing so, but only partially. The little boy character seems off putting as he is detached from any interaction. If this is an attempt for a strong lone wolf character, the result is far from that. Dean as a sick companion feels doomed and depressing from the start while some of the antagonist are too overbearing in their zealous quest.Visual is pretty good, the movie plays with the setting to create a believable land plagued by drought. Color is mostly sandy brown with plenty of bright light for panoramic shots. Sadly, it doesn't translate well when the scenes turn to night time or any place covered by darkness. These are excessively vague and while these sequences are not that many, they are enough to hamper the quality.Some details are jarring for the post-apocalyptic world, which is unfortunately since the movie invested a lot on the setting already. Female characters are looking like models, which is hard to believe when even basic need such as water is scarce. At some points Kendal is supposed to be stealthy, but she merely struts in an open field for all to see. Not to mention at latter half she becomes one woman army, dispatching foes with shotguns and a katana like it's a Walking Dead episode.The Well delivers an intriguing premise with the teenage girl lead and it makes good use of the barren land, although the entirety of her journey might feel inconsistent and contrived.

Saw this at the Leiden film festival 2014 (LIFF), where it was selected for the American Indie Competition. Given is a post-apocalypse situation, after all water disappeared from a large area. Some farm houses are still more or less intact, with a few sparse inhabitants who try to survive with limited resources and nearly defective equipment. Our main character is 17 year old Kendal, involuntary head of a household that consists of herself and her handicapped brother with ailing kidneys. At the other end of the spectrum we have a greedy water baron, who claims all of the (little) still available water, collects it underground in water tanks, and is supported by a small army that doesn't shy away from lethal violence. As a result, he makes it more and more difficult for everyone in the area to pump up the water they need for their survival.Our main character Kendal has lots of luck, she is resourceful and armed with plenty of determination. As the story progresses she remains standing, contrary to many others with ill intentions. Kendal even has her way with a sword. Moreover, along the line of sheer luck, her brother with the ailing kidneys who can only walk with crutches, succeeds in shooting three men in a row, in spite of the latter being armed and normally impose their will by means of those armory. It shows desperation all right, but it stretches our belief that this can happen for real.Beautiful shots of a desolate area, leaving us wondering how this situation came about. I'm not sure, contrary to another reviewer, whether it would have improved our viewer experience if we had known more about the background of brother and sister, and similarly about the reason of the water shortage. The background is hidden along the story, and is revealed sufficiently for us to understand a bit of the context. The message we take away is that there is no hope for the nearby future.Another irrational element in the plot is Kendal's desperate chase for a distributor cap of the correct type, that fits a plane in a hangar seemingly belonging to no one. She goes at every length in finding the distributor cap, checking every car or van within reach, in order to get the plane in the air. She hopefully assumes that the rest of the plane is in perfect order (it does not look that way from our viewpoint). This chase for missing motor parts is a constant theme throughout the running time.The label Horror is not correct by my standards, due to missing creepiness throughout. Yet it has all the elements of a slasher movie, that maybe being the reason for the Horror label, coming from the continuous killing that seems necessary in the survival of the fittest process as demonstrated here.None of the flaws summed up above keep us from intensely following what happens on screen, and feeling along with Kendal and her brother. They seem the only ones standing up against the greedy water baron, in short a perfect candidate for a young female heroine to sympathize with. Due to their lone position we cannot expect them to survive until a final solution is reached, nor do we see a viable strategy to leave the area. Yet, they come a long way, much farther than we could have assumed. For spoilers sake, I cannot tell more about how this story works out eventually, but anyway it is different from what I had expected.All in all, depressing landscapes, mixed with little hope for some form of escape from the harsh reality due to defective equipment and limited resources all around. From the "post apocalypse" situation that is the center of the action, we cannot expect an "enjoyable" experience. Nevertheless, the believable acting, the camera work in and around the abandoned farms, and the desolated landscapes, all of that cooperates nicely to let us leave the theater satisfied. Also, no action or violence for the sake of it, but what we get perfectly fits in the story line. In conclusion, I am fully prepared to overlook the flaws that I summarized earlier.