ROUND THE DECAY (2025)

3 stars

Seven Tales. Digital – 22nd June UK. 23rd June US.

The film starts in what we assume is the past – a scared, possibly Native American woman, running through the forest. She is caught and taken into a tent, where she is confronted by Whelan Newport (a village elder of some sort), who proceeds to stab his wife, who is sitting next to him.

‘The only thing that can kill monsters, are monsters’ he shouts at his captive. However, his wife doesn’t die, as she is something else…

Cut to modern day.

Kenzie (Victoria Mirrer) is returning to Newport’s Valley, where her fiancé, we later learn, disappeared into a cave near the town. She is staying at the Barn Owl Inn. Roz (Sienna Hubert-Ross) works there but needs extra money and manages to get a job from Gregory Newport (Jamie Dufault) who is some kind of important person and presumably a descendant of the guy from the opener.

But then she is attacked and disappears…

Meanwhile a bunch of hikers are wandering around the forest nearby. Stopping for the night, Muffin (Jay Vioshnis) and Peyton (Alyssa Batsakis) are busily ‘at it’ in the tent, so Trevor (Sassan Saffari), Tara (Angela Ann Palermo) and Aida (Aida Kazarian) decide to go into the boarded up caves to do drugs. Well you would wouldn’t you…

Also in town and staying at the Inn is Munroe (Damien Maffei), who has been asked to come there as he is a monster hunter.

Clearly something strange is going on in this small community and it isn’t long before folks are being gorily killed by who knows what (well many of the townspeople know, that’s for sure). An ancient evil has been unleashed…

Apart from its terrible title (what does it mean), this is quite an effective low budget outing, written and directed by Adam Newman, even if it is a bit all over the place. It is well acted by the cast, though there are rather too many characters to keep track of, which makes for an initially confusing narrative. A kind of throwback creature feature, the sort of film that Fred Olen Ray might have made back in the day, with it’s Wendigo type monster, which is thankfully kept in the shadows for the most part. There are some well done, bloody practical effects (and we will forgive the CGI flames – which never look good). The creature does speak at some points though, like in so many of these movies, it’s hard to make out the dialogue.

Steve Kirkham