Scopophobia: The extreme, irrational fear of being looked at. Four girls return home to a ghost town but find themselves being followed. By someone who knows what they did. Or just their guilty conscience? However, there’s more to each girl than meets the eye. From Melyn Pictures, inspired by the Giallo films of Italy.
Giallo translates to Yellow, which in Welsh is Melyn. First-time director Aled Owen uses the titular fear of being stared at and relates it to the medium of film itself in an exciting genre crossbreed of slasher, horror and Hitchcockian thriller within a gore-fest trench coat.
Scopophobia is an American horror thriller film directed by Michele Civetta and starring Catrin Jones, Emma Stacey, Ellen Jane-Thomas, Bethany Williams-Potter, Steffan Cennydd, Nathan Sussex, Rhodri Miles, Lisa Marged, Christine Kempell, Erwan Sion and Garry Sowerby. The screenplay was written by Aled Owen. The film was released on September 13, 2024 in the United States by Melyn Pictures.
Film Review for Scopophobia
Scopophobia is the fear of being stared at or being watched, a phobia explored in terrifying detail in Aled Owen’s Scopophobia during its world premiere at FrightFest 2024 as part of the First Blood strain. The film follows Rhiannon (Catrin Jones) and her friends as they return to their hometown to celebrate their various individual successes.
Back home, the mill that used to be the heart of their town shut down years ago, after a worker took her own life after she lost the mill’s money. In the shadow of the mill, Rhiannon and her friends have a secret, and she fears everyone in the town knows leading her to feel watched at every turn. The secret that binds the friendship group implicates all of them, forcing their loyalty to one another.
The plot takes some unexpected turns but comes full circle in the end for a satisfying wrap-up. The setting of a small, self-sufficient town works perfectly for this story, making it easy for the characters to feel watched, and to feel known whether they want that or not. In small towns, people politely keep each other’s secrets to their faces but gossip quietly behind their backs, and this dynamic is mirrored in Rihannon’s friend group.
As the story progresses, it’s hard to see why they are friends at all, leading audiences to wonder if they even like each other, or if they were just stuck together out of convenience and never changed their ways. Not only do they keep one big secret together, but they all keep secrets from each other. Even as adults, they seem desperate to fit in with one another. Scopophobia is a story about morality and guilt. What makes an act right or wrong at the time, and how can wrongs be righted in the future? What if a wrong cannot be righted?
The settings are perfect for the story. Inside the abandoned mill, you can feel all the town’s stories that never got to be finished after the tragedy. A feeling of being watched is imbued throughout the film, often filming characters from far away, or with the shot slightly obscured, to give the sense we are spying on something. All of the sneaking and secrets eventually culminate into the only ending there could possibly be, which genre fans must make sure they see for themselves in this twisty, deceit-filled horror.
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 scnes.
Scopophobia (2024)
Directed by: Aled Owen
Starring: Catrin Jones, Emma Stacey, Ellen Jane-Thomas, Bethany Williams-Potter, Steffan Cennydd, Nathan Sussex, Rhodri Miles, Lisa Marged, Christine Kempell, Erwan Sion, Garry Sowerby
Screenplay by: Aled Owen
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Adam Hollin
Film Editing by:
Costume Design by:
Set Decoration by:
Art Direction by: Megan Haf
Music by: Lloyd Morgan
MPAA Rating:
Distributed by: Melyn Pictures
Release Date: August 24, 2024 (FnigptFeast), September 13, 2024 (United States)
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