Part I: The movie

Martyrs (2008) is infamously known as one of the most disturbing films of the 21st century. It is often considered a standout of the New French Extremity wave, though writer-directed Pascal Laugier disavowed that label. And while Martyrs does use visceral gore and nihilistic themes (hallmarks of the genre) to make its point, it’s a mistake to label the film as gratuitous or exploitative. 

The story begins with Lucie as a young traumatized girl who escapes a rundown building. At an orphanage, Lucie refuses to tell the adults about her abuse, though her friend Anna tries to comfort her. Next, a 15 year time jump introduces us to a family having breakfast in their home. The mother has pulled a mouse out of the septic tank, restoring water pressure to the building. The parents praise their daughter’s athletic achievements while they mock their son for dropping out of school. “I want to study something I like,” he tries to explain, “law isn’t my thing.” Before we can learn anything more about these people, an adult Lucie interrupts their breakfast, and the violence continues. She is soon joined by Anna, who tries to protect Lucie while mitigating the situation. Over the next 85 minutes, the violence escalates with very few reprieves.

Everything about Martyrs is designed to be destabilizing. The point of view shifts every 20-ish minutes, at first focusing on Lucie, then switching to Anna, and then ultimately switching to their aggressors. The viewer is forced to cling to every line of dialogue, every glance, every movement. Watching Martyrs becomes an endurance test, especially when so much of the violence in the first half of the movie involves self-harm. “I really wanted all my [special] effects to be almost medical,” Laugier told WhatCulture back in 2009 while singing the praises of his late friend, VFX supervisor Benoît Lestang. “It’s supposed to be about the flesh, the real condition of the body when you hurt yourself.”

In a conversation with What’s Up Man after Martyrs screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Laugier explained that “any time there is a direct act of violence, it turns the story into something else. There are consequences to what we do.” This is how Martyrs continues it’s dialogue with the viewers long after the film ends. Once you’ve seen the completed film, do you view Lucie’s actions differently? Do you feel guilt, as Anna does, for questioning Lucie’s sanity? Are you frustrated by Anna’s choices? When the aggressors explain their motivations, do you believe them? Martyrs will not answer any of these questions for you.

Though there are no religious symbols in this film, Laugier has said in several interviews that he drew on his Catholic background while writing this story. “The film is a personal reaction to the darkness of our world,” he told the online magazine Electric Sheep back in 2009. He describes the Western world as a place where “evil triumphed a long time ago, where consciences have died out under the reign of money and where people spend their time hurting one another.” He specifically uses the word “martyr” to mean someone who witnesses something to which only they can testify. 

Here is Laugier explaining his movie in his own words:

“It’s a film about suffering. It’s a film about pain. It’s not a film about torture. … My film, for me, is very empathetic. You have to feel for them. I never make a laugh at my main characters. I love them and I want them to stop suffering. It’s a very sad movie. I would even say it could be a depressing film. It’s saying our time is over and evil has eaten everything.” 

Part II: The viewer

I first watched Martyrs in the midst of a downward anxiety spiral – I was intentionally seeking out fucked up movies. Having grown up in a Catholic community, I immediately connected with how suffering is portrayed in this movie. The film left me nauseous and foggy, like my brain was being rewired. I also felt relieved. I had never before considered how institutions fetishize the suffering of others, and this new perspective soothed my anxiety.

The second time I watched Martyrs, now knowing the film’s arc, I could absorb more of the non-violent exposition details sprinkled throughout the story. For example, the few adults that we meet aside from the aggressors all behave callously. The way Anna’s mother speaks to her, the way the parents mock their son – these are ‘small’ acts of violence that are very common in our world. Laugier is pointing to the continuum of violence. Other quiet moments play with reality. If Lucie’s demons are manifestations of her guilt, how did those cuts get on her back? Why does the hammer fall in such a way that leads Anna to uncover the house’s secrets? Despite the film’s brutality, I relish these intricate details. 

On my third viewing (spoilers from here onward), I understood Mademoiselle, and the acolytes that follow her. The way the parents praise their daughter’s athleticism is a nod to the fascist ideology that guides this cult. When Mademoiselle speaks, her words are gibberish, though she clearly believes in her cause. We, as the audience, never see what she sees in her photo album. She justifies her violence when she scoffs “people ignore the existence of suffering… yet everyone’s a victim”. According to her, the “true martyr” she so desperately seeks would be able to transcend the suffering she inflicts, though she is never the one to suffer. Her choices reveal the cowardice behind her philosophy.

Mademoiselle’s hypocrisy is so familiar to me, having grown up Catholic. I remember thinking as a child that I was a hypocrite because I did not believe in God. I attended mass most Sundays, and I always felt dishonest, like my heretical mind was an insult to the other attendees. I felt the need to hide parts of myself to fit in, but as I grew older, I witnessed several of the more pious attendees be violent, emotionally and physically, to their families and the community. I learned that my hidden self was not monstrous, like theirs, just different. My concept of hypocrisy changed; it’s not about dishonesty but a lack of identity. A hypocrite uses ideology to mask the missing identity within themselves.

Mademoiselle’s final act exposes the emptiness of her dogma. She achieves her ultimate goal when she gets a “crystal clear” answer from her martyr. This should be a celebration for her, she should be preaching, bragging even, to her followers. But she has tied her entire identity to this quest, and now that she has her answer, she is left with no purpose. Whether her martyr confirms or disproves her hypothesis doesn’t matter – her ideological quest has ended, and she has no identity left. 

Part III: the violence

Though Mademoiselle and her followers are very organized and very powerful, their nonsensical ideology is not dissimilar to the contradictions in our real world. We treat retail theft as a newsworthy crime, even though corporations regularly steal billions in unpaid wages. Marijuana grown in a basement is an illegal narcotic, while oxycontin produced in a lab is sold as a wonder drug. When a person walks across a country’s border without the right paperwork, they’re branded as a dangerous criminal, and yet countries that drop millions of pounds of explosives on civilians are hailed as heroic. We have, without question, organized our society around a delusional ideology that allows powerful institutions, like Mademoiselle’s, to dole out violence as they see fit.

Every time I watch Martyrs, I feel validated. Simply following society’s rules will not protect me – what rules did Lucie break as a child for her to deserve such a fate? This is not a safe world for children, and institutions are not empathetic. Lucie and Anna may fight back, but doing so does not lead them to a happy conclusion. This is the nihilistic takeaway from Martyrs: institutional violence is both meaningless and inevitable.

But there is a paradox buried in the details of Martyrs. Anna and Lucie, like so many people, are both motivated by empathy. Lucie is trying to help the person she couldn’t save as a child – in many ways, she is the film’s hero. Anna is trying to protect the woman she loves, so she chooses to stay in the house. They both do the best they can, and with their very limited tools, they manage to bring an entire cult to its knees. They cause the death of its leader. It is their so-called ‘insignificance’ that gives them power; two small mice gumming up an entire system of pipes. 

This world may be all violence, as Martyrs suggests, and delusional zealots may write the rules, but if you are reading this, then you have the capacity to feel joy and empathy. You are alive. It is radical to love someone, as Anna does, it is radical to atone for your faults, as Lucie tries to do. In a system that is so cruel, every second that I feel joy is precious and hard-earned. My greatest weapon is empathy, and it brings me joy to understand my power. 

This is my paradoxical reading of Martyrs. The world is cruel and punishing. So try your best, be kind, and cause a ruckus when you can. 

In a recent article, I talked about the legacy of William Castle and the many gimmicks he used to promote his horror films. One gimmick I neglected to mention was the Ghost-Viewer cards distributed for one of Castle’s most popular film, 13 Ghosts. Since the film’s plot involved pairs of “Spectral Viewers” which allowed the Zorba Family to see who and what was haunting them, Castle thought it was only fair to allow audiences to experience something similar. Through careful applications of red and blue filters, viewers could make the ghosts appear and disappear; the red cellophane slit of the cards would make the ghosts that were shot in red more visible as a result, while the blue cellophane would cause them to disappear into the background of the film which was tinted blue.

13 Ghosts, as that article also pointed out, was one of the only remakes made by Dark Castle Entertainment to reimagine Castle’s horror filmography in a new light. And the new light that screenwriters Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio shined down on the film was incredible. In place of the film’s campier headless men and undead circus lions, horrors were peeled from their purgatory states and trapped in October glass cases. Brought to life by the designs of effects artist Howard Berger, each ghost really came to life (or unlife, I suppose) as they got that weighty physical presence that Beck shunned the use of CGI ghosts for.

Each of the twelve ghosts in this film, dubbed the Black Zodiac, has their own special intricacies and quirks. On top of that, they each have a backstory, recapped as a special feature on the home release of Thirteen Ghosts (narrated by their captor Cyrus Kriticos himself). So today, I’ll be cataloging their origins and ranking all of them. I’ll be ordering the ghosts by the effectiveness of their design, and overall how impactful they are, both on screen and in their story. This isn’t trying to determine which ghost is the scariest, just the one that stands out the most. Beginning with the weakest first…

12 THE WITHERED LOVER

Jean Kriticos, the wife of the film’s protagonist Arthur Kriticos, was the last ghost to be “created”, but not the last to be collected. Her death was as sad as they come: a fireplace mishap set their Christmas tree aflame, resulting in a catastrophic housefire. Though Jean initially made it out, her burns proved too great to heal, so she was lost.

This is by far the worst of the ghosts Cyrus decided to capture, not just on moral grounds but because she’s mostly underwhelming compared to all the ghosts around her. She shows up for a sliver of the runtime, and while the prosthetic work in her makeup is fine, it lacks the feeling of a truly tortured spirit like her counterparts.

11 THE TORSO

Jimmy Gambino had a gambling addiction. As he fell deeper and deeper into the world of sports betting, he began to live bet to bet. Squandering all his winnings, he eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and became a bookie to keep himself afloat.

Jimmy’s demise was brought on when he was approached by a mobster wanting to put a big bet down on an underdog fighter. Knowing he couldn’t possibly cover it, Jimmy still accepted the deal in a desperate ploy to make some money. As mobsters are want to do, the match was rigged, and Jimmy was sent to sleep with the fishes when he couldn’t scrounge up the cash for his associates. As his name would imply, he didn’t end up making his way to the ethereal plane intact, with his body being just as destroyed in death. Brutal.

The Torso’s backstory does have a lot of humanity to it, which makes it compelling, and the three-piece design of his severed limbs, head, and torso is gnarly. But he gets beaten out by just everyone else because they manage to do the same while being especially visually striking and much more memorable.

10 THE TORN PRINCE

The only other teenage ghost aside from Susan Legrow, Royce Clayton was on a fast track to a number of college scholarships thanks to his natural talent for baseball. Still, Royce was a risk-taker who stylized himself as a greaser. This involved taking on dangerous car races, and in the exact turn of events you would expect, things went bad. A rival cut his car’s brakes, and the ensuing accident sent him to the afterlife with his baseball bat and all.

He is a greaser, he is a ghost. He’s a greaser ghost.

Not a whole bunch going on in the way of a backstory either, but still aesthetically appealing enough with his whole baseball bat and greased hair schtick.

9 THE FIRST-BORN SON

The simplest of the specters, Billy Michaels’ origins can be summed up in two sentences: Billy loved playing Cowboys and Indians until a neighbor boy decided to up the ante by using a real bow and arrow. Billy didn’t win the quick draw.

A bleak fate for the youngest ghost in the gallery, but certainly not the most painful. Billy does at least get the nasty wound, creepy kid factor, and a cool era appropriate outfit to make him stand out, so he gets one spot above Jean, Jimmy, and Royce.

8 THE ANGRY PRINCESS

Definitely one of the bolder ghost designs in the film, though the surface level risqué of her look has a heartbreaking origin. Suffering from extreme body dysmorphia and some form of PTSD due to her numerous violent partners, Dana Newman wrestled with her sense of self and body image her entire life. Despite having supernaturally good looks, it simply wasn’t enough.

So when she landed a job as a receptionist at a cosmetic surgery clinic, she made arrangements to be paid in surgical procedures instead. Eventually, Dana attempted an impromptu surgery to fix a nonexistent issue with her eye, but only blinded herself in the process. The resulting failure caused her to take her own life.

The Angry Princess is probably the design that got burned into most people’s heads because of the juxtaposition between beauty and grotesqueness she embodies. Personally, I feel like her backstory carries that design and gives it some real life that, out of context, would be just a kind of cool horror movie villain.

7 & 6 THE DIRE MOTHER AND THE GREAT CHILD

A packaged deal, these two ghosts are a mother-son duo who share backstories. Margaret Shelburne, who would become the Dire Mother, was born with dwarfism and spent her whole life being ridiculed and abused for it. With nowhere to turn, she joined the circus as a sideshow attraction. She eventually had a child by one of her abusers who worked alongside her, naming the baby Harold.

Overly protective and unwilling to let him grow up, Margaret overfed Harold and kept him isolated from the outside world the best she could, “babying” him until he grew to monstrous proportions with an infantile mind. When her fellow circus performers accidentally killed her in a dangerous prank that involved trapping her in a bag, a mentally stunted and emotionally damaged Harold went on a rampage and killed the entire circus. He was eventually taken down by a mob led by the circus’s ringleader, and reunited with his mother as spirits, where they formed two more pieces in Cyrus Kritico’s master plan.

There is a shock value to these two when you first see them in the film, and their designs make you ask the question every designer wants people to ask about their characters: what’s their deal? They pique curiosity while balancing between the frightening and sympathetic; a perfect haunting duo.

5 THE BOUND WOMAN

A beautiful young prom queen with a promiscuous streak, Susan Legrow’s life was one of many trysts and flings as the town’s heartbreaker. Eventually, Susan’s chronic infidelity would trigger the psychotic reaction of her then-boyfriend Chet. He would seek revenge by killing the man she cheated on him with, torturing and binding Susan, and burying her under the school’s football field.

There’s a very palpable discomfort that comes with looking at all the ghosts in the top five, and Susan’s state of eternal distress is particularly bad in a way that is almost worse than a ghost who can straight-up attack you. With the exposed bone and choked expression that Laura Mennell subjects viewers to, The Bound Woman has some serious nightmare fuel potential that rounds out the frights of the other eleven ghosts perfectly.

4 THE JUGGERNAUT

Born with gigantism, Horace Mahoney was seemingly the strongest of all the phantoms in Cyrus’s collection, and the one that proved the most trouble in capturing. Ostracized by others, Horace grew up deeply maladjusted, with the only person who accepted him being his father. The two worked alongside each other in the family’s junkyard for the remainder of his life.

But with his father’s passing, Horace’s true nature was unleashed: he became a notorious serial killer known as The Breaker, who would systematically break every bone in his victim’s bodies. His killings were eventually stopped by police, who had to shoot him upwards of 50 times and lost several officers in their attempt to apprehend him. He certainly ended up living to (and dying by) the name.

John De Santis is one of Hollywood’s quintessential “Big Guy” character actors. He’s been in so many projects over the years, and still, his work as The Juggernaut will be what he is remembered for. He really slipped into the role of the shockingly violent and surprisingly creepy phantom like a glove, so he deserves all his flowers for his portrayal here.

3 THE PILGRIMESS

The ghost with the worst luck on this list is curiously the one with the best luck as well. She is also the oldest of the spirits, as she’s one of the earliest English colonists of the Americas. In life, she was known as Isabella Smith, a woman who didn’t curry much favor with other colonists for being “an outsider”, presumably of a different religious background than the others.

After a string of livestock deaths and the passing of the town’s preacher, her fellow pilgrims accused her of being a witch, and eventually set a barn she was in on fire. When she survived the fire completely unscathed, either out of sheer luck or actual witchcraft, she only suffered a much more prolonged demise: she was locked in a pillory, stoned, and starved to death over the course of weeks.

This might be an odd pick for the #3 spot, especially ahead of The Juggernaut, but I think these three ghosts could carry their own films. There is an undeniable charm in having ghosts from beyond the 20th century in this film too, which makes it feel like a proper old campfire story. The Pilgrimess is a perfect example of a persecuted person from another time, dragged screaming and locked up to the future, trapped in a never-ending prison. There’s double the dramatic irony as well, since she is both trapped in her pillory and simultaneously trapped in Cyrus’s machine; extremely rough, extremely cool execution.

2 THE JACKAL

The most feared ghost by fans of the film, The Jackal is also one of the most tragic due to the origins of his distinct look. Abandoned as a child, Ryan Kuhn became a listless serial killer who targeted young women and prostitutes. Despite his bloodlust, Kuhn was aware of his sickness and even tried to cure his compulsions by voluntarily submitting himself to an asylum.

No matter how strong his restraints were, Kuhn would escape them, until eventually, his doctors had a cage placed over his head along with his straitjacket to prevent him from savaging anyone with his teeth. He succumbed to a fire that consumed the asylum, being the sole victim; Cyrus mentions in his notes that Kuhn’s death was most likely voluntary as well, assuming he would get some peace in death. He was sadly very wrong.

The best physical acting in the film, Shane Wyler made the Jackal the face of Thirteen Ghosts, and he deserves all the credit in the world for it. He’s just so kinetic and charged up with every moment he’s on screen, and that torn-open cage is a really nice inversion of the classic masked monster that shows you all the fine detail in his face. It’s an ideal design, with an ideal portrayal.

1 THE HAMMER

A spirit from the 1890s, George Markley was originally a gentle giant of a man and a blacksmith on the American frontier. However, being an African American in a predominantly white town, Markley and his family were far from welcome by the townspeople. After he was accused of theft, both of his daughters and wife were killed by an angry group of bigots.

George would go on to avenge his family with extreme violence, killing the man who had accused him of theft and his cohorts with a tool of his trade: a hammer. George was killed by an angry mob in turn, who impaled him with hundreds of nails and railroad spikes, before replacing his hand with the head of his hammer in a final attempt to defile him and his legacy. However, Markley’s vengeance never ends.

Now this, this is the one. If that Thirteen Ghosts television series ever comes to fruition, this is the one ghost I would want to see the most of. He has a classic ghostly backstory, his design conveys a painful and torturous death, and the makeup and numerous pieces of prosthetics meld perfectly, it all just synergizes to make the perfect spirit. It reeks of someone who has unfinished business sticking around to get revenge, and moreover, a ghost you can root for.

Some might consider it over-designed with the abundance of moving parts, but it is just the right amount of insane for me to match Markley’s backstory and make the best of the twelve.

***

Do you agree with the rankings? Do you have a favorite ghost from Thirteen Ghosts you’d like to see in the TV series? Or do you have thoughts on the movie in general? Be sure to tell us in the comments on Instagram, the replies on Twitter, and anywhere else you can find us under the tag @HorrorPressLLC! And for more articles like this one, stay tuned to HorrorPress.com for the latest in everything horror this season!