There’s a mystery afoot in Ruth Platt’s ghost film, Martyrs Lane. The film, a feature adaptation of the writer/director’s 2019 short of the same name, is less interested in traditional spectral hauntings than exploring grief and loss through the eyes of a little girl who doesn’t fully understand what’s going on. While there are still several A+ jump scares sprinkled within, Platt’s film is first and foremost a coming-of-age film about a pre-teen attempting to uncover her family’s dark secrets.
Leah (Kiera Thompson) is a precocious 10-year-old living with her family in a large, isolated house near the woods. Her father Thomas (Steven Cree) is the local vicar and his work with the Church and its parishioners keeps him busy. Leah’s mother, Sarah (Denise Gough) is a tough, rules and manners-oriented matriarch who has neither time nor patience for her youngest daughter. University-bound Bex (Hannah Rae), meanwhile, is protective, but also slightly abusive of her younger sister, prone to openly mocking Leah’s asthma attacks and attempting to scare her with local ghost stories.
The film opens with a nightmare: Leah dreams of creeping next to her sleeping mother and reaching for the ever-present locket she wears around her neck, only to have her mother clutch her wrist unexpectedly. The young girl is obsessed with the mystery contained within the jewelry, and when she finally discovers (and then loses) the lock of blonde hair inside, Leah is thrust into a mystery that she can’t let go of. Even if she wanted to stop, the little ghost girl (Sienna Sayer) who begins visiting her each night won’t stop feeding her clues and encouraging her to engage in increasingly dangerous behavior.
The truth about the nameless ghost girl and the hair isn’t too difficult to suss out, but that’s not really the point of Martyrs Lane. Platt is far more interested in exploring the psyche of a young girl who seems to be a ghost in her own life. Leah is an afterthought in her own house, frequently unattended and left to her own devices unless she draws the ire of her mother for violating the rules. When Thomas is present, it is clear that he is the more loving of the two parents, but his work always comes first. Since Bex is busy living her own life and preparing to leave the nest, Leah is left mostly with Sarah.
The relationship between mother and daughter is fascinating to behold. Gough strikes a tough balance with her performance: it’s evident that Sarah has affection for Leah, but there’s a barrier between them and many of their interactions feel transactional (wash your hair, don’t eat sweets before dinner, etc). Leah is so starved for attention and affection that it’s hardly surprising that she latches on to the mysterious little girl who demands her attention.
It begins innocently enough, as the girls play two truths and a lie under the covers. In time, however, the games take on a dangerous, more curt tone as the ghost demands Leah perform more and more dangerous tasks in order to recover the lock of hair.
Throughout all of this, Platt frames the late-night talks and the larger household in two strikingly different lights. Because Martyrs Lane is filtered through Leah’s lens, the house and the outside world frequently appear huge. Leah isn’t tall enough to reach the top of cupboards or trees (there are plenty of shots in which these items tower over the girl, or extend offscreen), so interacting with these items requires her to climb or precariously balance.
In her bedroom, however, Leah’s world shrinks as she and the ghost laugh, conspire and talk under covers and beneath the window. It’s evocative of how big and unknowable the outside world can be compared to the safety of your own space when you’re young. Platt excels at slowly corrupting the latter as the film progresses: not only does the ghost’s appearance slowly decay with each passing encounter, but she becomes more dangerous, and the bedroom loses its sense of safety for Leah.
Besides Platt’s well-paced screenplay and the spectre of religion that hangs over the film’s production design (religious figures are quite literally everywhere in the Church-owned house), Martyrs Lane’s greatest asset is Kiera Thompson. Leah is in every shot of the film, so the film lives and dies on her performance. Thankfully Thompson is more than up for the responsibility; she delivers an incredibly assured and mature performance. Leah is playful, inquisitive, and just the right combination of demanding and hurt. She’s a pre-teen UK Nancy Drew and as the film descends into increasingly darker territory, Thompson’s plucky energy maintains a sense of adventure amidst the danger.
Despite the overall simplicity of the film’s central mystery, Martyrs Lane is an elegant, melancholy fable of childhood, anchored by a captivating young lead. Armed with a few good scares and lush production design, Ruth Platt’s film is a gentle ghost mystery filtered through the eyes of a child.
Martyrs Lane has been acquired by Shudder for release on September 9th.
