After a catastrophic hiking accident, Marion must drag her dying husband out of the Appalachians before his body is taken over by a reanimating parasitic phenomenon -- the ROT.
R.O.T. abbr. (US) - Reanimating Organic Tabefaction; the parasitic process affecting deceased mammals where the host’s corpse transports the parasitic organism to uninfected areas.
Discovered c. 2016.
Marion
Always pragmatic, she does not tolerate bullshit. Distressed with the state of the world, Marion worries that things have gone too far and there’s little hope for the future. Even so, she’ll always do her part when pushed. She’s smart, tenacious, and prepared, and despite her pessimism, a warm and caring person in the right circumstances.
Dan
A try hard with unrealistic expectations. Dan is the type of guy who wants everyone to know he’s doing his part. Unfortunately, despite his best intentions, Dan isn't great at following through. An eternal optimist, he’s convinced things will work out, but isn’t always willing to do the work to ensure a positive outcome.
Directors’ Statement
Kyle I. Kelley & Adam Brown
We collaborated on our first short film in 2011, and have been working together ever since. What began as a work-for-hire relationship quickly became a partnership, as we recognized similar creatives tastes - especially in our love for mystical realism and transcendental/slow cinema. Since that first film, we’ve made five short fiction films and collaborated on numerous other creative projects that have played in festivals around the world including Palm Springs, Maryland, Nashville, Fantasia, and Cucalorus. ROT is our first feature length project as a team.
While post-apocalyptic and zombie genres have dominated mainstream film and television in recent years, ROT takes a different approach by concentrating on a micro story of a failing marriage, rather than the global pandemic it takes place during.
Our goal is to show the internal conflicts of our characters externally through the deteriorating environment surrounding them. To do this we set our film’s focus on the final moments of Marion and Dan’s doomed marriage within a world that’s just at the beginning stages of a not-yet-fully-grasped apocalyptic phenomenon. In building the world of ROT, we wanted to set our characters in a place and against a foe that would require urgency, but would provide more of an existential threat, rather than a direct conflict. The R.O.T. itself is not a sentient menace in the style of traditional horror villains. Rather, it is a long term threat to the stability of the global ecosystem. In ignoring the issue, or doing the bare minimum to contain its spread, we are complicit in the eventual destruction of the planet -- our walking corpse seedlings only one such manifestation of our abdication of responsibility.
The themes of ROT are both personal and global. There is a clear and pervasive threat from a global environmental pandemic, which only one character seems to take seriously. At the same time, Marion and Dan’s personal story is one that almost anyone can relate to -- the collapse of a relationship as a couple grows apart.
It was important to set up the world in a way that it provided a background conflict against Marion’s struggle to get her dying husband out of the woods. Ultimately, Marion’s conflict is the physical act of dragging her husband. Relationships that outlast their healthy lives are something that almost anyone can relate to. There is a real fear that comes from wanting things to remain as they are. As with any good thing, there’s always a fear it will end. With ROT, we’re exploring the fear of not knowing when a relationship should end, and the consequences of hanging on too long.
Having collaborated on several short films that employed elements of magical realism, we plan to bring to bear the same unique visual style and immersive soundscapes of our past work. Despite the fantastic plot, the film will be grounded in reality with a focus on thoughtful compositions that allow our actors to move through their environments. Our camera will be an observer, owing much to cinema verité and the recent golden age of grown-up horror, such as films like A Ghost Story, Hereditary, and The Babadook. Collaborating with our sound designer, Ryan Dann, we will set out to create a largely diegetic soundscape to ground us within the language of the film’s environment. We will combine realistic elements to present a sense of moody dissonance in the post-apocalyptic world Marion and her husband inhabit.
The Team
Adam Brown: Director
Adam Brown is an award-winning narrative filmmaker and editor based in Brooklyn. Adam’s work delves into surreal dark comedies that sometimes involve soul sucking music teachers, eye popping relationships, and giant ramen noodle monsters that live in the woods. His work has screened at several film festivals across the world including; Sundance*, Palm Springs Int, Nashville, Maryland, Fantasia, Athens Film + Video Festival, ASFF, & Cucalorus Film Festival.
Kyle I. Kelley: Director / Cinematographer
Kyle I. Kelley is an Emmy award winning cinematographer & colorist based in New York. He has shot multiple fiction and documentary features, including Uncle Peckerhead, Maggie Black, While I Breathe, I Hope, American Experience: Sealab, Good Ol Girl; Train Keeps A Rolling, and It Cuts Deep. His early career assisting Buddy Squires, ASC, led to an appreciation for verite and observational camera work, which translates into his style on everything from feature documentaries to short fiction films. His past collaborations include award winning fiction and non-fiction filmmakers, and companies such as HBO, Insignia Films, and the New York Times.
Heather Taylor: Writer
Heather Taylor is a writer, director and resident of the 2018 Bell Media Prime Time TV Program at the Canadian Film Centre. She has developed shorts, web series and features – both narrative and documentary – and graduated with a Masters in Screenwriting from City University, London. Heather was staffed on season two of THE HARDY BOYS for Hulu/ Corus and co-wrote two episodes, one of which earned her a nomination for a Writers’ Guild of Canada (WGC) Award. Her second feature film, LETHAL LOVE, produced by Neshama Entertainment and MarVista Entertainment, is streaming on Netflix in the US, UK, and Australia.
Work Samples
Visual Inspiration
Vast, oppressive wides in which the landscapes appear to swallow our characters. Formally composed frames that add to the strangeness of the unexplained ecological phenomenon slowly devouring the forest. A muted landscape punctuated by moments of contrasting colors with low key lighting that hides as much as it reveals.
Comparable Films
“Moving into territory once the preserve of prestige dramas, horror has never been more bankable and celebrated than it is right now. And while evil clowns and serial killers at sorority houses still haunt young viewers (and make tons of money), we’re in the midst of a golden age of grown-up horror. Hushed and character-driven, this mix of indie fare and blockbusters works ferociously on adult anxieties in an age of dislocation.” - Jason Zinoman, New York Times
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