A young girl holds her hands up to her face with a scared expression in a still from Martyrs Lane.

Watch an Exclusive Clip From the Spooky Fantasia Fest Hit Martyrs Lane, Premiering This Week on Shudder

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Martyrs Lane was one of the most anticipated films to premiere at this summer’s Fantasia Fest and early reviews have indicated that the excitement was well-placed. The movie, which is written and directed by British filmmaker Ruth Platt and adapted from her 2019 short film of the same name, is being hailed as a creepy, atmospheric, melancholy ghost story about grief and loss–more “unsettling” than jump-out-of-your-seat scary.

The film premieres this Thursday, September 9 on Shudder and we have an exclusive clip ahead of its release.

First, here’s the film’s official synopsis:

In this unsettling ghost story, Leah, 10, lives in a large, old house with her family but can’t quite work out why her mother seems so distant. At night she is visited by a mysterious guest, who might be able to give her some answers. With a new challenge every night, Leah is rewarded with bits of knowledge that, when pieced together, threaten to shine a dangerous light on both the truth in her nightmares and of the world she lives in.

Leah’s distant mother sleeps every night clutching a gold locket, which seems to be central to those visits the young girl receives from the “mysterious guest”–another young child claiming to be her guardian angel. (I have some doubts!)

Check out our exclusive clip here:

And here’s the full trailer, which gives us a larger look at this spooky, tense film that has drawn comparisons to both Guillermo del Toro and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Martyrs Lane will be available to stream on Shudder starting this Thursday, September 9.

(image: Nicolas Laborie/Shudder)

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Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.