ROYSTON VALE ROAD

Directed by Chris Annable

2025



Developed as part of the anthology, Serial, Royston Vale Road is a slight, comedy-heavy, found footage short directed by Chris Annable, co-owner of the Straight to Video movie memorabilia and tape store in Alfreton. It was shown alongside Exhibit B to kick-off the Quad’s POV: The Found Footage Project one-day film festival.

It follows a group of online paedophile catchers, led by the absurdly gruff, over-the-top ‘Gaffer’, played by Rick Mallin. How much milage you’re able to get from the opening of the film will depend on how much absurd, mansophere nonsense you can stomach, as ‘Gaffer’ bullies and belittles his subordinates before heading on a sting operation.

In a joke taking straight from The League of Gentlemen, the influence of which should be obvious from the title, they arrive at what they believe to be the right house: 696 Royston Vale Road. However, the ‘9’ is clearly a ‘6’ that has a lost a screw and fallen beneath the other numbers.

There’s nothing really surprising from this point on. ‘Gaffer’ attempts to intimidate the supposed predator (Steve Dwyer) only to have the tables turned in particularly gory fashion.

There are some really funny scenes here and there, especially when the mistake with the house numbers has to be pointed out to the crew, and an excellent one-liner about not getting a new pair of trainers in the blood – a line made even funnier by Chris explaining that they were shooting in a house that was for sale, and the line was necessary because they couldn’t risk stomping fake blood across the carpets.

There’s also something unnerving about Steve Dwyer’s laugh, which is sampled and repeated over and over as the hunters find themselves locked inside the house. It would be interesting to see how it fits within the Serial anthology because overall, this is just a bit too heavy-handed with the performances and a little too light on story to stand on its own.

★★

2 / 5

Matthew Tilt

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