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Short summary

Karla Marks mysteriously vanishes while conducting a paranormal investigation with her husband. A year after her disappearance, a group of paranormal investigators attempt to uncover the truth about her disappearance.
Karla Marks mysteriously vanishes while conducting a paranormal investigation with her husband into the Devil's Well, an underground location reported to be a gateway straight into hell, and the site of ongoing strange phenomenon. A year after her disappearance, a group of investigators go back to uncover the truth about Karla, and are faced with evil forces greater than they ever imagined.

Trailers "The Devil's Well (2018)"

According to director Kurtis Spieler, some of the scenes where strange sounds were heard were unplanned. Spieler encouraged the actors to stay in character if anything happened and to try and use it. As a result, the reactions by the actors in some scenes are real. In fact, the scene in which Riley and Kris are investigating the generator room and the EMF detector goes off was also unplanned. According to Spieler, the EMF detector started beeping and flashing on its own and the actors reactions are all real (while still staying in character). As a result, it became one of Spieler's favorite scenes.

The character of Kurt Schafer can be seen wearing a shirt with the name/logo "The Dick Punchers". This is a reference to Kurtis Spieler's first feature "Sheep Skin", in which the main characters are in a punk band called "The Dick Punchers".

The original title for the movie was "The Unexplained Disappearance of Karla Marks". The title was later changed to the "The Devil's Well" after the movie was picked up for distribution.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: Kagda
    Horrible found footage movie ... if the guys from slipknot went on a murder spree.
  • comment
    • Author: Banal
    This film is just a mess.

    Part interview documentary (yawn) and part bad camera found footage ( bigger yawn). It doesn't know what it wants to be. The actors are boring and the action at the end is quite frankly garbage and not scary at all.

    Why are these films being made. We know the iPhone has a great camera. Pity about the quality of what is being filmed.

    Don't bother with this chicken dropping of a movie.
  • comment
    • Author: Dukinos
    Don't waste your time watching this movie. I wish I would have read the reviews before watching this stupid movie!
  • comment
    • Author: Siralune
    The first half of the movie is a fake documentary and is pretty solid

    the second half is found footage. It begins well, but the team carries two obvious liabilities for no reason 1 - the husband, that the team don´t trust 2 - a medium that clearly doesn´t help with the claims of "finding uncontroversial proof" and is obviously going to be possessed

    In the last half hour the team that was working well suddenly starts acting stupid. There is no more protocol. Before they were exploring in groups, but now everybody walk into the darkness alone. when obnoxious sceptic guy see a man in the camera, he asks by radio that an unarmed little woman "go check to see if we are alone"

    the first 70 minutes were interesting and it would deserve a better evaluation, but in the ending it seems everybody took the Cabin in the woodspheromone that reduces intelligence
  • comment
    • Author: LoboThommy
    THE DEVIL'S WELL is another one of those interminable 'paranormal investigation' movies shot on an indie budget. The whole thing is dragged out ad infinitum and follows the same old predictable template. A team of researchers head off to a supposedly haunted location to look for a missing woman, but not before the viewer must sit through half an hour of the most boring interview segments ever. Before long we get to the usual scenes of characters lurking around in the gloom and pretending to be scared. It's not very convincing, but it is very boring.
  • comment
    • Author: Anaginn
    Another forgettable flick in the "paranormal investigation gone awry" subgenre. You'll forget it half an hour after you've seen it.
  • comment
    • Author: Najinn
    But this is one of the worst found footage movies I have ever seen. The first 30 minutes is spent doing obviously fake interviews with misc people. About 33 minutes in, the movie actually starts and a team moves to the location they have been discussing. Then you really get to see how bad the actors are and watch the movie just fall apart.

    I watched this movie all the way through, hoping it would get better. At a point, I almost had hope for it, but it fell apart and just became a waste of time. Terrible actors, terrible script, terrible ending. Just all around bad. Probably the second worst found footage movie I have watched ever.
  • comment
    • Author: JoJolar
    Paranormal investigator Karla Marks (Anne-Marie Mueschke) goes missing while investigating "The Devils Well" located in the basement of an old house in Woodsfield, Connecticut. Her husband Bryan (Bryan Manley Davis) is the main suspect. After the police let him go, Mark uses the services of another paranormal team to investigate the well.

    Bunch of hand held footage. Nothing spectacular. Special effects nonexistent. Acting and dialogue was dry, not overly bad. The beginning repeats itself for some reason.

    Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.
  • comment
    • Author: Vivados
    I read about this film back when it was called "The Unexplained Disappearance of Karla Marks." Now titled "The Devil's Well" it suffers from poor pacing, like of a developed mythology and a really horrendous ending.

    The opening is people talking about what happened to Karla and most of the characters are trying to push a spooky, paranormal explanation, but since we have no idea of the circumstances surrounding her vanishing, it sounds more like the actors pushing the idea, not the plot itself. And it goes on much too long, so there's no tension.

    Then it jumps a year later and a paranormal group is going to investigate what happened. Now, that fine--but again, all we know from the police, news reports, etc. is that she disappeared. An unsolved crime, but they keep blaming the spooks. Where the film falls apart is they spend so little time on the mythology. Supposedly there's a well in a cellar of a home built in the 1700s. A young girl jumped to her death in the well. Okay. And? And? That's about it. It's not like it happened every 50 years or so. Just once. Yet someone, it's called the devil's well and the property (an old text tile mill) is haunted. Really? Based on that? When the camera crew visits the town, they talk to residents a la BLAIR WITCH. But while BLAIR used these interviews to expand on the mythology, these interviews lead no where. "Don't go there--it's an unholy place!" "My friend felt sick to his stomach but when he went outside, he felt better." That's about all we get.

    The rest of the film is found footage based on their investigation. There is an eerie soundtrack added to the footage, which is really annoying unless the music was playing during the investigation. The acting throughout is okay, but really, the film is terribly padded. There are a couple, "OMG! Did you see that?" but even though they say they caught on camera other people in the building, we're never shown anything. The actors just wander in the darkness, chatting with one another so we get their backstories. But we don't care.

    And then (SPOILERS) Karla shows up at the well, dazed and confused. Then some thugs show up wearing silly "scary" masks (just for us, the audience) and kill everyone. Then Karla and the thugs all hold hands around the well, ready to serve him. Hmmm. Really? Why'd the little girl jump in the well back in the 1700s? She was never found again so if Karla is like the little girl, why is Karla found again and now part of the group of well wishers? None of this makes sense, the film is not at all scary, and it makes you wonder why they didn't bother to tie in the mythology with the disappearance of Karla. Skip it.
  • comment
    • Author: Ynye
    Was drawn into seeing 'The Devil's Well', with a creepy poster/cover, a fine premise and as someone with a general appreciation for the genre it fits under. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there (though there are decent to good ones as well), made me though apprehensive.

    It is sadly however yet another film seen recently, hence some reiteration because the exact same strengths and flaws present in those films are here, that to me was incredibly disappointing considering its potential which it doesn't do anywhere near enough with. 'The Devil's Well' is really quite awful, with so many huge flaws and doesn't do anything with any potential it had. There is nothing good here in 'The Devil's Well', amateur hour all round.

    Going on to the negatives, the story does feel over-stretched and some of it comes over as vague and under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less unsettled and never gaining momentum. All the characters are too sketchy and with cardboard thin and colourless personalities and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their annoying and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrates. The chemistry is bland and unfocused.

    The sound quality is obvious and utilised cheaply (being too loud in the build ups and people's reactions), the effects are shoddy and nearly all of the acting is lacking severely on the whole, that's actually an understatement as the worst of it is horrendous. There is no sense of horror or engagement with the awful predicament they're in, and no connecting with the character, it just reeks of indifference and complete blankness which makes the viewer not care less too.

    Dialogue can be stilted and rambling while the pace and film drags on forever, apparent from the very start, never recovering that interest is lost fast. The final third is stupid beyond belief. Found too many of the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness, a lot of dumb and vague moments and explanations and the lack of tension and suspense. Thrills are none, thanks to stodginess and excessive over-familiarity, and found myself never invested in the drama, which tended to be indifferently acted, interminably paced and statically directed.

    A lot of 'The Devil's Well' has really dull and going nowhere plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations, while too many of the things to make you shocked are far from creative or unsettling. It all feels rather tame while the threat completely lacks menace and looks terrible.

    Nothing freaky or interesting, no development and too derivative, while everything is unimaginative and are more odd than scary, completely failing to show any sense of dread. There is nothing interesting or illuminating with what the film was trying to do and the drama is overwrought with no momentum and a lot of weirdness. The direction is barely there and disorganised and the music is ill-fitting. 'The Devil's Well' is very amateurish visually, too drearily lit and shows no care in the way it's shot. The camera work is one of the film's biggest flaws in fact, the worst of it an eyesore.

    Overall, terrible. 1/10 Bethany Cox
  • comment
    • Author: Andromakus
    I actually found this to be a decent watch. First, I'd like to address one of the issues someone else mentioned in their review - this reappearance by the well only happening once, not every 50 years or whatever...

    It did happen before!!! Recall, the cop who got stabbed and shot one of the Satanists. He mentioned the spooky scared girl (did he say she was naked? Or was it wearing a white dress - I can't recall that.). But anyways, this happened what, 30 years ago? The exact same deal - Satanists and a girl. Clearly, the girl was similarly disappeared and reappeared, before disappearing yet again. So the point is that this does indeed happen in the past, and Karla is not the first one.

    You know, for what it was it was decent enough. Bunch of Paranormal Investigators go and try to help out Bryan, whose wife disappeared a year before. He was accused of killing her, and even arrested for it! This investigation is done in order to clear his name once and for all. Then... She's back! The film goes nutso, as they get locked in and subsequently murdered by four Satanists, as Karla ultimately slits Bryan's neck and then they all disappear, off to Hell, apparently.

    My one issue: The Satanists all used knives or machetes. I expected, as they made q big deal of one of the Investigators having a firearm/gun, that this would be something of a issue for our Satanists killers. Instead... The Satanist assigned to that dude has a shotgun or automatic rifle, blowing him away as he shoots helplessly and uselessly. Wow, what luck! The one Satanist assigned to him also had a firearm. They had no way of knowing about his gun, as a big deal was made about it being a concealed firearm. They ended up just using a scripting crutch, having the miraculous luck of the one armed Satanist having encountered our armed protagonist.

    No real special effects were used. It was filmed decently enough. I felt it was worth a watch: The film just goes so gaga in the last 10-15 minutes, taking such a freakishly wild turn, that it captivates your attention and you can't turn away, wondering just what the holy hell is going on. As it turned out, with a proper sacrifice and a bizarrely possessed and missing/in Hell itself, it was a Portal to Hell, indeed!

    There are a lot of low budget, Indy horror films out there. And the paranormal investigator shtick has been used and used some more. But I ended up liking this one, as the concluding few minutes came out of nowhere -you could have never guessed what was coming, even when Karla suddenly reappeared- and thus it ended up making the film a worthwhile time investment. Try it, stick around until the end, and you just might like it!
  • Cast overview, first billed only:
    Bryan Manley Davis Bryan Manley Davis - Bryan Marks
    Chris Viemeister Chris Viemeister - Lucas Baker
    David Alexander David Alexander - Kris Manners
    Joe LoGiudice Joe LoGiudice - Townie
    Kristen Seavey Kristen Seavey - Riley Harper
    Jon Gregory Jon Gregory - Dennis Howard
    Lauren Sowa Lauren Sowa - Lynn Baker
    Kurtis Spieler Kurtis Spieler - Kurt Schafer
    Anne-Marie Mueschke Anne-Marie Mueschke - Karla Marks
    Robert Riggs Robert Riggs - John Livingston / Father
    Lisa Meckes Lisa Meckes - Nancy Livingston / Mother
    Jes Almeida Jes Almeida - Sarah Reynolds / Friend
    Rebecca Behrens Rebecca Behrens - Stacey Livingston / Cousin
    Nancy Marlowe Gordon Nancy Marlowe Gordon - Marlene Francis / Historian
    Mark Resnik Mark Resnik - Peter Gram / Retired Police Officer
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