The Last Survivors

Considering this site lists this movie as being made for television* I was expecting something along the lines of what you get on the SyFy Channel . Warning sign number one . I read the synopsis on this page and saw it featured a ballsy heroine in a post apocalypse scenario which conjures up images of teen marketed speculative action thrillers similar to THE HUNGER GAMES and THE MAZE RUNNER . Warning sign number two . On top of that this film is known by the dual title of THE WELL and THE LAST SURVIVORS which is never a good sign of a film so it looked like three strikes and your out but still decided to give it a chance and while I wasn't blown away in amazement I was occasionally surprised by THE WELL

Set in the near future mankind faces extinction due to a lack of precipitation making the land surface of the planet arid . Now human life is dependent on water , a human being can't live for four or five days without it and one wonders why governments haven't embarked on a crash program of building of water desalination plants to solve or at least lessen the problem . Perhaps they have but the film doesn't really give details of this and is left open ended and mainly unexplained . That said the enigma of the drought doesn't really damage the story and unlike the recent Brit flick HOW I LIVE NOW the apocalypse is fairly convincing and well done . The film concentrates on the trauma of teenage girl Kendal as she tries to survive against a gang of scavengers who want to rule the desert valley she lives in by stealing all water resources and murdering anyone who is of no use to them . In some ways it plays out like a revenge Western . I was taken aback in how gritty and gloomy the story was and it's not afraid to kill off characters . Haley Lu Richardson makes a somewhat uneven heroine and while Kendal is written and cast to audience identification for a female teen audience she wasn't really someone who I could relate to though I did appreciate the downbeat mood of the piece . That said - and I hope am not being patronising - the people who can identify with Kendal will probably be put off THE WELL / THE LAST SURVIVORS by the gloomy tone . In other words despite some strengths it won't satisfy all the audience all the time

* It was until I wrote this review I realised "TV" beside the title was IV . I should have gone to Specsavers

'The Well' was the opening film at the inaugural Other World's Austin Sci-Fi festival this year. Directed by Tom Hammock, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic Oregon where we are informed that 'the rains' have simply stopped some ten years ago (from the not too distant future) and the last remnants of a once fertile valley struggle to survive as their most precious resource - water - systematically becomes more and more scarce. Teen Kendal is one of such survivors that hides out in an abandoned farmhouse with a character whose name I forget. Meanwhile we learn that there is villainous figure surrounded by his many zealots that scour the valley, hunting for survivors who he claims are using his water without his permission (as he has claimed the remaining water in the valley and thus the land). As one of these few remaining holdout survivors, Kendal scrounges for water and supplies why searching fruitlessly for a distributor cap to aide in the repairs of an old airplane (that her group dreams of escaping in). The film itself started off fairly slow though it kept my attention with an intriguing plot and a fairly convincing performance by Haley Lu Richardson. She grows to be a bad-ass through the film battling her foes with her trusty shotgun and eventually a katana. It isn't outrageous or over the top like you'd see in a Tarantino or Rodriguez style film but it still has that 'this is still a low budget sci-fi' charm to it. She gives a decent performance that is not only mildly genuine, but also just felt right for this type of survival flick. The cinematography is decent and gritty at the same time and really lends itself to feeling the sparseness of the wasteland. Other than Kendall and maybe the villain played by Jon Gries, the characters and their development aren't too memorable, but it isn't glaringly sub- par. It's a solid little movie with some fairly decent suspense and action sequences as well as the much needed creepy-factor from both the landscape and the gas-mask wearing henchman.At any rate, I enjoyed The Well for what it was and what it was not. It's clearly not a big budget film, but yet it still manages to capture the magic and intrigue of films like The Hills have Eyes, Mad Max, The Road, as well as a host of other post-apocalyptic films. Like I said – the dialogue isn't all that great and some of the supporting characters are occasionally painful in their deliveries and screen presence, but overall it was still a fun little movie to watch. If you're like me, you'll probably get annoyed by some of the hiccups in the 'attention to detail' category as well as the fact that in a completely barren wasteland, the main character has inexplicably fantastic hiding skills. Seriously, she just runs across the desert and no one spots her or thinks to check behind the door-frame when she's hiding out in a house.

"There was a time when a man owned the land, he controlled the water. But things are different. The water's mine, so the land is mine."

The feeling I had after watching this post-apocalyptic film, was an irresistible urge to drink. Just as in "Mad Max" there's a scorching drought. Earthly life is reduced to a struggle for survival in a world that hasn't seen a drop of rain in more than 10 years and the survivors search daily for some precious water. Similarly, the courageous and very young Kendal (Haley Lu Richardson) who goes on patrol every day to get a few sips of water for herself and a few survivors in the area. She's also looking for a particular component that's required to make a defect airplane so she and the sick Dean (Booboo Stewart) can escape from the dead and dry Oregon valley.

First the positive comments about this movie. The dreary, parched landscape is truly brilliant portrayed. The decaying houses buried by sand and the endless sweltering desert ensure, as I mentioned earlier, that you soon need something to quench your thirst. To create this miserable, desolate world, the Mojave Desert was used. The isolation of the scattered remaining inhabitants, is filmed in an adequate way. More than once the images made me think of an old Western movie. Also the performances were, especially that of the youthful Richardson, admirable. Quite an achievement at that age. She plays the role as protector and guardian of the spring with skill. The role of Booboo is limited, partly due to his illness, which means that his action space is confined to the attic. And the most adorable part is played by Max Charles as Alby, a brave little boy who sometimes turns out to be more mature than we thought in the first place. And third, despite the lack of action, the tension is tangibly present.

Unfortunately, there were also some negative points. First, the bad guys are not very original. Obviously, there's again the religious whining. And when push comes to shove, they turn out not to be that clever when it's about defending themselves. After a while it even started to be a bit monotonous. Over and over again the back and forth running in between the various buildings and abandoned vehicles, really started to irritate at a given time. And seeing this fragile girl using a samurai sword as if she has done this already for years, was also hard to believe.

But still it managed to fascinate me and it all looked intriguing enough, despite the limited budget. The desperate situation in which the individuals found themselves and the insane plan of Carson to acquire dominion over all the available water, so his daughter Brooke would become heiress of an empire, created a nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse game. "The Well" is a typical low-budget film that nevertheless managed to surpass other similar films, just by the appropriate use of limited resources, its authenticity and some decent acting.

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I think the ratings on IMDb for this movie are for once spot on. It doesn't deserve more than an average 5. It's not that I didn't enjoy watching the movie or so because this is one of the genres I really like, apocalyptic movies. But the story-line is sometimes really stupid and that brings the movie down. For example when the bad guys visit the farms for multiple times over and over again and they need heat sensors to see if there is still somebody living or hiding there is just too ridiculous. The house is almost totally destroyed and is a dump, you really don't need a heat sensor to figure out if there are survivors. It's little things like that that are not good for the movie. Otherwise Haley Lu Richardson as the main character does not do a bad job. She's just not helped by the poor script. The last half hour is also not that great. They clearly ran out of imagination and didn't put too much effort in it.

I guess. If beautiful teen models struggling to survive a violent, widespread water shortage isn't silly enough, the dialogue and acting in "The Last Survivors" are too weak to convey believable struggle. The actors just don't have the chops to offer much more than their beautiful faces as entertainment. Put a little makeup on the male lead and he'd be kissable too.

No offense, but based on most of the reviews on Amazon, young viewers enjoy it as a beautifully shot post apocalyptic teen romance. Fair enough, but I can't imagine any intelligent person over 30 sitting through this vapid chain of artfully composed scenes. I had to fast forward through almost half of the film to see if there was any payoff by the end of this uninteresting, slow moving, cliché ridden story. Nope! And, "better than the "Road," as one reviewer wrote? Not even close.

I generally enjoy the low budget post apocalyptic sci-fi sub genre. However, the lack of grittiness and believable survival savagery made this movie too lightweight to sit through.