The world premiere of new horror feature The Mill Killers, is set for its world premiere at Pigeon Shrine Frightfest 2024.
‘The Mill Killers’ is a 100-minute horror feature film. The film was written and directed by Welsh filmmaker Aled Owen. Aled Owen also produced the film, alongside Portsmouth’s Tom Rawding, as the Carmarthen-based production company Melyn Pictures Ltd, which was established in 2021.
The film follows Rhiannon (Catrin Jones) who suffers from the titular condition as a result of deep guilt, having been peer-pressured by her friends to steal money from their local steel mill as a teenager. Ten years later, the film finds Rhiannon reuniting with these friends, played by Bethany Williams-Potter, Emma Stacey, and Ellen Jane-Thomas.
This time, the place is a ghost town, and the girls pressure Rhiannon into taking them back into the now-abandoned mill, to retrieve the stolen money. Rhiannon hides the cash box within the mill’s walls, but when they enter the mill to find it, they get locked inside, and there’s someone strange inside the mill with them. Perhaps their past has come back to haunt them, or perhaps it’s just their guilty conscience playing tricks.
‘The Mill Killers’ was produced on a shoestring budget made up entirely of the cast and crew’s own funding, and two online crowd-funding campaigns (on Indiegogo and Greenlit respectively). Production began with a 5-day shoot in Carmarthen, in March 2022. These were predominantly the film’s cheapest scenes (dialogue scenes, free of any action or effects), and the footage was then used to raise more funds for another 6-day shoot in October 2022, this time taking place in Swansea’s Bay Studios and the National Botanic Garden of Wales. Stunt/Fight Coordinator Kevin McCurdy and Special Effects Prosthetics Artist Ellie Baldwin joined the production at this stage. With two-thirds of the film shot and edited, another crowdfunding campaign allowed the cast and crew to complete filming with one final 4-day shoot in March 2023, in the factories of Middlesbrough. Within 15 days across 1 year, the film’s production was completed.
Aled Owen and Tom Rawding met at the Northern Film School (Leeds Beckett University) and both graduated in 2019. This project began when the Covid-19 pandemic caused Aled’s first film industry job to end prematurely. Worried that this would set him back to square one, Aled and Tom decided to create an opportunity for themselves. The script’s story was conceived by Aled while walking around Carmarthen during his allowed outdoor hours throughout lockdown. Seeing his hometown so empty and lifeless inspired the plot of ‘The Mill Killers’.
Catch The Mill Killers at Frightfest 2024.
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