In writer/director Adam Newman’s 2025 film Round the Decay, which released to Digital platforms earlier this month, a young woman, Kenzie (Victoria Mirrer, who appeared in Newman’s previous films, Everwinter Night and Carolina Shag), returns to the small New Hampshire mountainside tourist town of Newport’s Valley, where her fiancée, Zack, died in a bizarre caving “accident” 2 years prior. Meanwhile, a group of twenty-somethings decide to take a weekend camping trip near said mountain. After venturing into the same cave in which Zack met his demise, the campers stumble across an ages-old monstrosity, accidentally releasing it upon themselves and the town. Truth be told, there’s not much to this town besides an inn, a small plaza, and a hockey rink. That said, the town’s seemingly few residents do seem extremely fond of the place.

The creature (Rachel Pizzolato – “Mythbusters Jr.”, 2024’s Street Trash remake), called a “Wrexsoul” and designed by veteran special effects artist Greg McDougall (“Stranger Things”, Doctor Sleep), has its origins revealed in Round The Decay‘s opening sequence. Coincidentally, this also happens to be one of the film’s strongest moments, thanks to a fairly intense performance from actor Roger Clark, known to gamers as Red Dead Redemption‘s “Arthur Morgan”. Understandably, but still somewhat unfortunately, the Wrexsoul doesn’t actually appear until nearly a third of the way into Round The Decay‘s runtime.

Instead, Round The Decay spends this time introducing and (at least, marginally) developing its multitude of characters, as well as its limited settings. Fine. No problem. This said, there’s seemingly little development of our group of campers, character or maturity-wise. Despite years of cinematic advancements and evolution, these are the same obnoxious “teenaged/young adult” characters that have been going camping in low-budget horror films for the last 45 years. They’re all fairly generic and interchangeable and you’ll be happy to see them die. I know I was. Eventually, it is revealed that at least a few people were aware of the creature’s existence all along, creating not only a secondary adversity for our band of survivors to contend with, but also exposing a few allies along the way.

However, Newman tends to put most of the story’s focus on Kenzie, dwelling far more on numerous flashbacks to her previous trip with the ill-fated Zach. Seriously, I kinda lost count just how many there were. While these sequences do reveal a little more backstory to not only the character but also the history of the town and its leaders (albeit perhaps a tad too coincidentally), they also tend to just murder the film’s pacing.

When Round The Decay focuses on just being a fun and fairly action-packed “monster movie” with its share of comedic moments, things drastically pick up, and I found the film to be significantly more entertaining. In many ways, it reminded me of something that could have aired on The Sci-Fi Channel/SyFy some fifteen to twenty years ago, during the network’s “heyday” of premiering new B-grade (sometimes, lesser grade) monster movies each weekend. Longtime readers should know that this is a huge compliment coming from someone like myself as I regularly tuned in to catch films such as Mansquito, Mega Piranha, S.S. Doomtrooper, and even 2005’s ill-fated Man-Thing adaptation. Granted, some of those films were of more dubious quality than Round The Decay… particularly the latter two.

Damian Maffei (The Strangers: Prey At Night, Mutilator 2) shows up to add most of the film’s action and levity in a supporting role that very likely would have been the lead role in many other like-minded films. Given the outcome, I too wish that more attention had been placed on his character than on Kenzie’s multiple flashbacks. Sienna Hubert-Ross (Terrifier 3), Alexis Safoyan (D-Railed), and Cary Hite (prolific narrator and voice actor) help round out the cast. Honestly, I found each of their characters far more interesting as well. There’s even something of a conspiracy subplot that’s telegraphed early on and maybe a tad cliched, but even it was more compelling than the “troubled relationship” soap opera that keeps interrupting things. It’s not that Kenzie’s history isn’t relevant to the central plot. It is. It’s just that her history is only a small piece of the creature’s history.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m repeatedly bashing on Mirrer’s performance. I’m not. In fact, there’s nothing particularly bothersome about the performance. The problem is that the character is given little to do but stand around looking sad and forlorn for most of the film… which includes all those damned flashbacks that take place before Zack even dies!

As mentioned early in this review, Round The Decay originally released in 2025, playing film fests before receiving a theatrical release later in the year. I was even offered a chance to review the film at that time. If memory serves correctly (and it probably doesn’t), I passed up the opportunity as I was either working on or preparing to work on that year’s Halloween-season contributors series. Round The Decay seemingly disappeared from radar for a few months, presumably while seeking a distribution deal. Now, the film has released to Digital platforms, including Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango At Home.

Round the Decay isn’t a “bad” film, per se. Actually, I found the film to be a quite fun piece of “fluff” entertainment. That is, when it’s not throttling itself with excess melodrama and exposition that amounts to little more than “emotional baggage”. Let it go, girl!