The Marked Room

Isaac Neely

7/11/2026

I have always been a very sentimental person and have enjoyed building things in a definitive manner. When I was growing up with my two sisters I would watch many of the old Disney movies like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Every once in a while I would get to see a boy movie like Swiss Family Robinson or Treasure Island and me being the eldest child my parents loved to show me their favorite movies, like Tombstone, Time Bandits, and Braveheart. I would be remiss to not mention the influence games like the original Modern Warfare 2 have had on my writing. These all have been an immense inspiration to me. With a budget of almost nothing we did the best with the tools available, but the low budget nature of The Marked Room does add a level of charm. I think one of the main driving forces in this whole project was my desire to create a definitive movie for myself, that gives off the feelings that I like to feel, whether it be the feeling of complete isolation in the wilderness, or the feeling of collecting and inspecting all the cool little things in the world like rocks, coins, and guns, or just a good argument. A good argument is one of the greatest things humans can create. The Marked Room has so many motivators and feelings but its most prevalent themes are of rage, greed, and terror. We used vibrant unrealistic lighting and aggressive color grading in some scenes to invoke these themes in tandem with the plot. Additionally we made use of anamorphic lenses and harsh lighting in some scenes to give a sense of power. I really enjoy the nuance between the acting and the writing; when sometimes the dialogue comes off as passive aggressive but then the characters can turn around and make you second guess whether you hate them after all. The Marked Room shows how consumption, conceitedness, and complacency can guide people to unintended destinations.