Round the Decay 2025

In a haunting flashback from the late 1600s, Whelan Newport, Roger Clark, leads a desperate band of colonial settlers into Newport’s Valley, an unforgiving landscape that resists every effort to conquer it. Facing resistance from local Indigenous people, the settlers turn to a dark ritual. Whelan, driven by power and fear, sacrifices his own wife to an ancient spirit known as the Wrexsoul, an entity that promises dominion over the land in exchange for blood. The Wrexsoul manifests as a grotesque humanoid with hollow, dripping eyes and a chilling ability to mimic the living. In a swift, horrifying sequence, the spirit exterminates the native population and curses the valley with guilt, secrecy, and blood that will echo through generations.

Jump to the present day. Kenzie Rhodes, Victoria Mirrer, returns to Newport’s Valley after years away, grieving her fiancé Ben who disappeared during a hike through the region’s ancient forest. She checks into the Barn Owl Inn, a decaying lodge now run by Bart Blakewell, [Cary Hite], who is trying to revive the town’s dwindling tourism. Kenzie’s arrival unsettles the locals, who sense the town is trapped in time — few new businesses, few young people, and a collective reluctance to face what truly lies beneath. Roz Jackson, [Sienna Hubert-Ross], a longtime friend who now bartends at the only remaining pub, warns Kenzie to steer clear of the woods, hinting that Ben’s fate might be tied to darker forces.

A foursome of hikers—Aida Kazarian, [Alexis Safoyan], her boyfriend Trevor Darrisaw, [Sassan Saffari], and two college friends—arrives at the inn and decides to explore a cave system known as Widow’s Gap, long closed to visitors. Deep inside, they uncover crude colonial symbols etched in the rock and a mummified corpse hanging upside down with its mouth sewn shut. The discovery awakens the Wrexsoul, and that night Trevor is found torn apart in his tent while Aida flees back into town, bloodied and terrified.

Sheriff Denton is quick to write Trevor’s death off as a bear attack, but Munroe, a mysterious visitor and seasoned hunter of regional folklore, knows better. [Damian Maffei] brings a calm intensity to the role, sharing a past connection to similar killings in nearby towns and hinting that Newport’s elite have long hidden a painful pattern. He meets with Kenzie in secret, explaining that her fiancé’s disappearance is part of a repeating cycle tied to the valley’s curse and to a lineage of secrecy among those descended from Whelan Newport. Kenzie’s dreams grow more vivid, with the Wrexsoul mimicking Ben’s voice and walking with a limp, calling her name in distorted tones. She begins to question whether her memories are genuine or planted.

Meanwhile, Bart uncovers strange writings under the Inn’s floorboards—bloody inscriptions naming the valley’s original sacrificial victims and binding terms that echo the town’s sinister history. An old resident, Agnes Lawley, hints that the valley is “sick with the blood of betrayal,” revealing a layered history of sacrifice every few decades as the Wrexsoul returns to feed on grief and guilt. Some locals still secretly uphold an ancient covenant, feeding the horror rather than ending it.

Kenzie, Aida, Bart, and Munroe form an uneasy alliance and search the ruins of the Newport family homestead for clues. Munroe explains that the Wrexsoul cannot be killed in a conventional sense; it is a binding of spirit and flesh, and only another “willing soul” can trap it in a new tomb. The entity functions like a psychic sponge, feeding on unprocessed trauma and reproducing the pain of its victims. The group retreats to the cave, hoping to lure the Wrexsoul with a ritual drawn from Whelan’s journal. Bart sacrifices himself to buy the others time, and a brutal battle unfolds within the cave’s pulsating darkness. Munroe is gravely wounded, and Aida is briefly possessed by the Wrexsoul, speaking in Ben’s voice. Kenzie nearly breaks, but she finds a resolve within—driven by love and duty.

In a climactic act, Kenzie offers herself to the Wrexsoul, reciting the original covenant in reverse and placing her own name where Whelan’s wife’s had stood. The creature’s form shudders and begins to disintegrate in a whirl of shrieks and ash, as a cave-in seals it beneath rubble at dawn. Roz and Kenzie watch as smoke rises from the valley; the sheriff is gone, Munroe lies dead, Aida leaves town quietly, and the Inn remains boarded up. Yet the land feels markedly quieter, as if a terrible burden has been lifted—at least for now.

Weeks later, in the valley’s ruins of an old barn, a group of children plays and hears faint whispers calling one of their names, a chilling reminder that the Wrexsoul’s shadow may still linger, waiting for the next moment of grief to stir it back to life.