FrightFest Glasgow review – The Well
There’s a nostalgic feel to Federico Zampaglione’s latest Italian horror – which looks back to the gothic/romantic family curse in a castle pictures of the 1960s and the grimy torture porn knock-offs of about fifteen years ago with an equal measure of fondness and cruelty. If there’s a moral vacuum at the centre of its story – which the director co-concocted with Stefano Masi and Julian Richards credited as ‘script consultant’ – then that at least turns out to be the whole point of it, even if you’re not guaranteed to leave the cinema with a smile.
Lisa (Lauren LaVera), daughter of a legendary art restorer (Giovanni Lombardo Radice in a bad dream cameo), travels to a castle in Lazio to wipe the soot off a 15th century painting owned by aristocrat Emma (Claudia Gerini) – work which has to be done within the next two weeks or there’s an enormous forfeit to be paid. Meanwhile, a trio of scientists here to observe the local fauna are bashed over the heads with branches and wake up in a literally rat-infested dungeon which also contains a) a hulking mute thug gaoler (Lorenzo Renzi) and a well which turns out to be home to something worse. The cutaways to suffering, pleading and video nasties style gore in the basement slow things down but are a needed counterpoint to the elegant, sinister business with the ageless aristo and hangers-on, notably including her resentful tween daughter (Linda Zampaglione, who shouldn’t be written off as a nepo kid since she’s close to being the best thing in the film) and a Nosferatu-look witch (Melanie Gaydos) who creeps long-taloned into dreams.
A couple of surprises won’t shock anyone who’s seen many horror films – but the penny-drop point is strung out reasonably – and the cadaverous demon-vampire-ghoul big bad Guron (Stefano Martinelli) has an unusual plot development near the end. I found I was ahead of the game for about an hour, and got fed up with some of the dungeon shenanigans, but the last reel gets into more interesting material, including an affecting bitteersweet moment when someone briefly gets what they’ve wanted for a long time followed by a coda which deliberately sweeps away the gothic and the sadistic in favour of the more horribly practical.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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