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A grim history lesson kicks off Round the Decay: pay attention, because it matters later on. We start in, I’m assuming, the 19th Century: a pursuit through woodland leads to the capture of a Native American woman, who is then brought to the tent of a white settler – who it seems is expecting her. He has plans, and not just for the land. Nor is his vendetta against indigenous people the full story: he has more than conventional means at his disposal, including what looks like the ability to resurrect the dead. But he needs sacrifices. Something monstrous, dependent in some way upon a place and its people: that’s pretty much all you need to keep hold of with this film, as it’s a fairly old school monster movie, using the familiar tropes and tricks of the genre to weave together a decent, if not always ground-breaking horror narrative.
Sticking with the small community of Newport’s Valley, we move into the modern day, and meet – a lot of people. In fact, even discounting the historical prequel, I think we link up with around twelve different characters in the first twenty minutes, and more as we go: it can feel like quite a lot of characters and threads. We meet Kenzie (Victoria Mirrer) and her fiancé Zack (Topher Hansson); Bart (Cary Hite), new owner of the local inn; single mother Ros (Sienna Hubert-Ross), new employee of the inn; some community spokespeople, a hiking party, a mysterious outsider called Munroe (Black Eyed Susan star Damian Maffei)…it’s busy. In terms of plot, we get some local discussion of the town’s economic situation and need to attract more tourists – which it can ostensibly do, given the great natural beauty all around, with attractions such as Whelan’s Pass – named for the town founder – an appealing hike, but the for the fact that there’s a fenced-off, foul-smelling cave at the bottom of the trail. That all aside, the people come, and this route seems to have particular importance for Kenzie, for reasons which become more apparent.
It soon becomes clear that there’s more going wrong at Newport’s Valley than just an economic downturn. As different bands of people in turn begin to suspect that there’s something weird in that cave things kick up a gear, doing so via some nicely-handled moments of practical SFX (take a bow, Makeup Department). And, whatever was in there, is now out – following the survivors back to town.
Round the Decay is a decent indie horror, but be aware that it follows a tried-and-tested route, sticking to what works and has worked rather than risking – if that’s the right term – any surprises. For some, that may mean that it falls rather flat. It plays its narrative reasonably straight, too: there are no big aesthetic decisions, no designs on being a period piece (as much as the plotline and the monster FX feel like a big callback to a lot of straight-to-video 80s horror); there’s nothing trippy, no interruptions to the timeline, nothing of that kind. However, its performances are good, neither hamming it up nor playing it totally po-faced i.e. striking the right sort of balance for the subject matter and style. There’s enough confidence to break the tension with a few moments of humour, which work fine, and although things begin to get a little slower after the one hour mark, for the most part the film ticks along at a reasonable pace.
There’s some attempt at world-building, too. On that subject, there’s some difficulty with understanding what the monster is actually saying in the current edit of the film, though I understand that this is getting fixed ahead of the theatrical release. Monsters always have the same speaking voice, have you noticed? Their intonation can suffer as a result.
Coming across very much as a passion project and content with being in many places an affectionate homage to other films, Round the Decay will be on select big screens (US) from January 31st. This feels like a good environment for it, so if this sounds like your kind of thing, why not take a look to see if it’s coming to your area? Tickets can be purchased ahead of time by clicking on the link…