Rot taught me something. I never, ever want to be a graduate student. Seriously, this movie makes it seem like the kind of living hell that I’d rail against.

Madison (Kris Alexandrea) is one of those under pressure grad students, so part of the life of academics that the one thing she can leave behind is her boyfriend Jesse (Johnny Kostrey). But once he goes missing, someone or something else has taken his body over. And being busy with the demands of a doctorate will be easy compared to this.

Writer/director/editor Andrew Merrill has put together a story that could be a possession film or something akin to a body snatcher movie, but it never really explains much about the evil force that is inside Jesse. What’s more important is how his rage explodes and how it impacts everyone in his life.

The how is quite simple: Jesse is injured by an attack by one of the patients in the nursing home where he works. At first, he seems fine, but before long, he assaults both his roommate Aaron (Johnny Uhorchuk) and girlfriend Nora (Sara Young Chandler) and then disappears.

The virus, if you will, has begun to spread all over town, with the very center of it being the nursing home. With a title like Rot, you can rest assured that things will get messy.

You can buy Rot right here.