[Panic Fest 2020 Review] Rot Really Disappointed Me

“Too weak to carry you but I will find you legs and eyes to see,” an old woman tells the thing living inside her towards the beginning of short film director Andrew Merrill’s debut film Rot. For the longest time, I didn’t quite understand the title and it seems that it was an almost spur-of-the-moment choice right before it was submitted to its first festival. The previous working title was A Place Called Hell, which is a more evocative and compelling title...if also similarly obtuse and messy. I guess that’s fitting because while there are a lot of intriguing themes and issues swirling around, they don’t quite coalesce the way it wants to.

On the plus side, there’s a giant phallus. 

Madison (Kris Alexandria) has been dating her boyfriend Jesse (Johnny Kostrey) for quite some time. She’s a teacher’s assistant with an eye on a scholarship opportunity that could propel her future into the stratosphere. She wants bigger and better things with her life and, honestly, she’s been outpacing Jesse who’s content with whatever as long as they’re together. At a TA support group, she listens to her peers talk about their ruined relationships and how it’s better to just quit them now. One of them shares a conversation she had with her ex-boyfriend that ended with, “You aren’t the most important thing to me right now.” Her boyfriend didn’t understand. 

Jesse also doesn’t understand. He’s planning on proposing to Madison while she is planning to break up with him. His night gets worse when he gets to work at the hospital the old woman mentioned above has been staying. And before you know it, she’s found “it” a better body by spreading her infection to Jesse. It overwhelms his senses and impulses and the minor problems and issues Jesse had are amplified to an alarming degree. He becomes abusive and then apologetic. Then he vanishes into the night, leaving Madison frustrated but distraught. 

This is all interesting and well-done. Merrill created sympathetic characters and we spend a lot of time with them, building their relationships. Even the side characters like Aaron (Johnny Uhorchuk) and Nora (Sara Young Chandler) are given more depth than you’d expect. They also provide an interesting foil to Madison and Jesse, with their burgeoning relationship contrasting with Madison/Jesse’s rapidly deteriorating one. Meanwhile, the horror in the early part settles in on that kind of paranoia of Shivers meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It also brought to mind last year’s The Dead Center which, while I haven’t officially reviewed, I really enjoyed. 

The problem is that the second act just lingers and flounders as it focuses mostly on a search party meeting in an apartment. Too much time is spent with Madison trying to get a search party together to locate Jesse. Any of the incredible slowburn mysteries the first act was just beginning to unfold and explore is halted as the tone of the movie moves into more of a mumblecore apartment drama. We spend so much time here, with an occasional dip outside, watching the group chit chat in small groups, drink and say they need to locate him…but no one ever does. It kills any goodwill and momentum the first act created.

There’s something to be said for the themes I think Rot is attempting to explore. The idea of toxic masculinity and the co-dependency that develops in toxic relationships. The push/pull that survivors of domestic abuse have towards their abuser, maybe. But it’s never fully developed. And neither is the tense paranoia the film tries to ape from 70s-style cinema. When it finally limps into the third act, it goes absolutely bonkers in the best way. I’d almost say that the finale makes watching the boring second act as it stages some absolutely fantastic prosthetics and special effects work that made me go, “what the fuck am I watching?” The gonzo filmmaking in the third act is such a departure from the preceding hour that it feels like a completely different movie. 

It’s a shame because this was honestly one of the films I was most excited to see at Panic Fest. There’s a good movie in here...it’s just a little rotten.