Markham

Can you make a film with no money and no script?

Kind of - this looks great - breath-taking at times - but doesn't make an awful lot of sense until you've seen the third in the trilogy (which I've seen a preview of - When The Earth Gives Up The Dead). But you get a sense the plot of the third was retrofitted to tie the three films together - its done pretty cleverly - but you can still probably drive a truck through the plot if you wanted to.

There's a few tech issues in the first one (Markham)- and large parts of the whole trilogy were shot on cine film??? Which is a bit retro?? The director acts as the DOP as well. All three films are mostly B/W.

Markham seems like art horror (a bit Eraserhead) The second one - Mountains of Madness is closest to the Lovecraft original - and not a bad attempt to translate that story to the screen with no money(my local Lovecraft society liked Mountains a great deal).

The third film is the most fun and the most like an 80s comedy horror. Reanimator or Night of the Creeps... The same actors appear in all three and the performances of Coughlan and Russell are great - in the second and third film in particular.

Worth seeking out all three - at least they're original - the natural place for all of them is on Youtube imho - or streamed somewhere for free - the director is chatty online and appears happy to engage with people who have seen the films. Which is refreshing.

I will keep an eye on upcoming projects from this team. As other reviewers have mentioned there's a chance they might make something very good in future.

**I got a free copy of this film when I bought the DVD of Mountains of Madness** I wasn't asked to leave a review on that basis though.

Mountains was good (for a nothing budget thing) but I was surprised at this film. Visually sumptuous on a pennies budget, but the plot, atmos and the whole feel of this (even down to some tech mistakes) makes it come across like a bad queasy paranoid acid trip to the north coast of England in the middle of winter.

There was no script according to the director (who wrote East Enders and Emmerdale for a bit) but the themes in this are picked up in Mountains too. I enjoyed it, but it is marred by sound issues, at what appear to be vital bits. Ropey CGI has a home made feel to it as well. Still worth seeing.

Very poor sound, which makes it harder to watch as you're struggling to get the dialogue, Movie Making 101 - Get the Effing Sound Right!!

However, someone here does have a good eye for the visual & whilst the majority of this is unwatchable, there is hope that if they do something else, it just might be a little better.