[Interview]: Aled Owen, Director and Star of The Mill Killers

Aled Owen in The Mill Killers

Welsh indie horror The Mill Killers , which was made and set in Wales, is now available to buy and rent online. Written and directed by Aled Owen, and produced through the production company Melyn Pictures Ltd, The Mill Killers has boasted a successful festival run, beginning at 2024’s edition of London’s Fright Fest.

The Mill Killers has also been nominated for and won film awards including Best Feature Film at Wales International Film Festival and International Film Festival of Wales, and Best Supporting Actress for Ellen Jane-Thomas at Dead Northern Film Festival.  

Catrin Jones as Rhiannon

The film follows Rhiannon (played by Catrin Jones) who reunites with her childhood friends in their hometown which has since become a ghost town thanks to the closing of the local mill. After persuading Rhiannon to visit the now abandoned mill in order to retrieve money they stole and stashed as teenagers, the group get locked inside and soon realise there is someone else in the building with them.

We sat down with writer, director and actor Aled Owen to discuss The Mill Killers, its themes and what's next for the filmmaker.

Can you let us know a little bit about yourself as a filmmaker and what led you to make The Mill Killers?

Of course! I'm from Carmarthen in South Wales, where we shot a lot of the exterior scenes in The Mill Killers. I studied at the Carmarthen School of Art and later at the Northern Film School in Leeds, graduating in 2019. When my first television job ended prematurely in 2020 due to Covid, I felt like I was back at square one, career-wise, and knew that other graduates felt the same, so I decided to create an opportunity for myself and others with The Mill Killers. Short films are great but they'd only gotten us so far in university, so instead we spent a short film's budget on a third of a feature film. It's very ambitious now that I think back on it - we could have spent thousands of pounds on scenes that make no sense on their own and never went any further, but thankfully the subsequent crowdfunding campaign was successful, and we've now got a feature film on AppleTV and Amazon!

Stylistically The Mill Killers seems to be heavily influenced by 1970s giallo, as well as the teen slasher of the late 90s and early 2000s. Was this a conscious decision you made whilst writing the film or is it an influence that presented itself whilst filming?

It was a bit of both. It was always a conscious decision to lean into 1970s giallo as an inspiration for the visuals and the soundtrack. It's become one of my favourite subgenres and felt like the perfect balance of ambitious style and achievable budget. As for late 90s and early 2000s teen slashers, that's more of a subconscious inspiration. I grew up on these films, getting hand-me-down horror from my older sister, so Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend have always been part of my cinematic language. I really felt that come through on set, hearing the characters play out the scenes, and loved that the fingerprints of those films were all over what we were making.

Can we talk about the colour theory used throughout The Mill Killers? There seems to be a heavy emphasis on the use of the colour red and yellow. Can you talk us through this element that is repeated throughout the film?

Of course "giallo" is Italian for yellow, because of the yellow paperbacks that Italian films were adapting in the 1970s. Yellow also translates to "melyn" in Welsh, which is the title of the production company behind The Mill Killers, so yellow is definitely important in paying respects to The Mill Killers' inspirations. Yellow is associated with danger and alarm, a signifier of sourness or poison in nature. Leaning into the colour yellow in the case of the stranger's raincoat is definitely intentional, and meant to add to the audience's preconceived expectations. You - the viewer - and the characters are expected to bring your own baggage to this film, based on other genre films you've seen in the past. As for red, I wanted to visually tie the cash box that gets stolen to the bloodshed it leads to. I also wanted to allude to the cash box as the forbidden fruit from Paradise Lost. There's a few links like that throughout the film, including Sam's car, but I'd like to leave some of it to audience interpretation.

One of the main themes throughout The Mill Killers is the horror of small towns and the secrets they can hold. Was it an important element for you to demonstrate through the film, emphasised by what seems like an inherent "Welshness"?

I'm a huge fan of Fargo, and a huge reason for that is the idea of "Minnesota Nice" hiding greed and betrayal beneath the surface. I always thought "Welshness" would work well as a British equivalent, given that, all too often, Wales' place on the world's stage is as the comic relief to otherwise English stories. Another quality of small-town Welsh life is the fact that everyone knows everyone. While this neighbourship is a wholesome and positive resource in our everyday lives, it also heightens the stakes in drama. Having no anonymity, and fearing the gossip of others, is exactly why soap operas work so well for so long. The setting doesn't just add to the horror in terms of its rugged industrial landscape, but also due to the feeling that all eyes are on these characters at all times.

Another thematic fundamental of the film is the fear of being perceived, a paranoia surrounding being looked at. Does this link back to the small town attitude which can actually traumatically affect people brought up in a small town community, and is this a personal fear of yours, especially as a filmmaker whose art is being perceived by others as is the nature of movies?

There's definitely a direct link between my fear of judgement as a filmmaker and Rhiannon's story in The Mill Killers. There's a moment in the film where the audience laughs at one of Sam's lines, and, almost as if Rhiannon can hear us, she turns towards the camera in shock. I always love witnessing that moment at screenings because it reminds the audience that we are watching this character from the shadows, just like her paranoia suspects. We're sympathetic to her irrational fear of being watched, and yet we're watching her. It's nerve-wracking putting this film out into the world. It's a representation of myself as a filmmaker. What does it say about me and how does everyone's opinion of me change when they see it? That's real horror for me - social horror! I saw it torment friends of mine as teenagers, especially girls in cliques. They're friends with nasty people based on a sense of obligation and nothing more. Terrifying!

Can you let us know what is next for you? Any more horror in the pipeline?

We have a very exciting project in development. It's a horror-comedy called "Mari Lwyd". It explores the strange and mysterious Welsh folk tradition of the Mari Lwyd; a wassailing figure with a horse's skull for a head. In winter, people in areas around South Wales take this hobby horse character door to door, singing reasons why they should be let inside and given alcohol to keep warm. The homeowners sing back their reasons against letting them in, and it goes back and forth until someone fails to rhyme in rhythm. It's fun and macabre and communal and creepy all at once. I can't wait to use this medium to show those outside of South Wales just how funny and scary this tradition can be.

The Mill Killers is available to rent or buy from Amazon, iTunes, AppleTV, and Google in both the UK and USA, with the addition of Sky in the UK. It will also be available to buy and rent in Australia and New Zealand on Amazon and iTunes.