The Mill Killers (Scopophobia)
This Welsh shaggy dog horror film from writer-director-actor Aled Owen mimics a particular 1980s sub-category of slasher movie (cf: House on Sorority Row, Terror Train) where the victim pool can’t go to the police as they’re being picked off one by one because they’re collectively guilty of covering up a crime (usually a prank gone wrong) though the individuals aren’t all equally culpable. However, it’s also a riff on a slightly more recent cycle (cf: Shallow Grave, A Simple Plan, The Descent) in which a group of friends turn on each other over a cash stash or in a survival situation while revealing the fault lines in their gang.
It has some nice little ideas – the apparently threatening messages which turn out to be well-meant is a new one on me – and a quartet of interesting young female leads, plus a handy found location in an abandoned mill whose downward turn in fortune, affecting the whole community of Milton, was triggered by a botched payroll robbery which has never been solved. Rhiannon (Catrin Jones), who suffers from the title condition, imagines people are looking at her all the time, and know the various secrets she’s been harbouring, though she’s the least specifically guilty of her gang. She gets back together with three schoolfriends – loyal speccy wallflower Sam (Bethany Williams-Porter), who has an epic crush on her … just-qualified/engaged success story Mia (Ellen Jane-Thomas) … and toxic mean girl Erin (Emma Stacey), whose fault everything pretty much is, though the plot spirals away from her to bring out a ruthless streak in the others.
After an evening in a near-abandoned pub, the women decide to retrieve the long-lost cash box from the shut-down mill and find themselves locked in and stalked by a slasher type in a yellow sou’wester who speaks with a voice-box. It strings out the suspense for quite a while before the bodies start dropping, and then goes in fresh directions – though it’s a tad overextended at 100 minutes. It’s nicely Welsh and stretches its budget with imaginative bits and bobs involving Rhiannon’s hallucinations and some black and white set-up and flashback scenes.
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