No matter how high or low a film budget is, nothing can ever save a bad script. Thankfully, writer/director Kurtis Spieler’s newest feature The Devil’s Well definitely does not fall into one. (I’ll stop with the well jokes now.)

The film follows the search for Karla Marks (Anne-Marie Mueschke), who mysteriously vanishes while conducting a paranormal investigation with her husband Bryan (Bryan Manley Davis) into the Devil’s Well, an underground location in Connecticut reported to be a gateway straight into hell, and the site of ongoing strange phenomena. A year after her disappearance, Bryan organizes a group of investigators go back to uncover the truth about Karla, and are faced with evil forces greater than they ever imagined.

Few people believe Bryan’s claims that the paranormal world is to be blamed, and are instead convinced that he either murdered her or set up an elaborate hoax in order to stir up their publicity and increase traffic on their website. Davis delivers a sympathetic performance that makes you all the more furious when his team doesn’t believe him.

The film follows a faux-documentary narrative; stylistically, it’s hardly a new concept, but the solid writing, performances, and suspenseful editing are strong enough to breathe its own life into it. Karla Marks has gone missing, and for the first time in a long while watching horror films, I genuinely wanted to see where she had gone. And here’s where she went!

The found-footage layout doesn’t quite blur the lines of reality with the deftness of Blair Witch or the [REC] series due to the occasional melodramatic arguments amongst the team, but the “authenticity” holds up and the looming terror is constantly present. And it’s sufficiently terrifying as hell. Which, incidentally, is where Karla went.

The Devil’s Well is not perfect by any means, and the staged-looking ending left much to be desired climactically. But it’s also creepy and immensely entertaining. It is sooooo cold in my house right now and it is 35 degrees outside, and this movie did not make it better because it was chilling. (I know I said I’d stop the puns, sorry.) I’ll be staying under blankets for a while.