6. The Martyrs (2015)
A practice that is unfortunately all too real, the film portrays just that.
A group of people who want to know what the afterlife is like but won’t die themselves, they torture Lucie, Sam, and Anna into creating creatures that have a glimpse into the afterlife. These creatures called “Martyrs” tell the society what they see.
Though with Lucie, who has a high pain tolerance, they value her as a rarity. Anna is buried alive toward the end of the film when Lucie is crucified. Anna saving her in the nick of time, Lucie described Purgatory in a whisper to Anna with the priest overhearing, after which he promptly commits suicide. Both dying from their injuries, Lucie and Anna cross over to Purgatory.
7. Thirteen Women (1932)
The mother of all slasher films, this stars Peg Entwistle in her only unfortunate role, and centers around a group of 13 sorority girls who teased one of their schoolmates for her mixed race. They all write to a clairvoyant, a psychic, who gives them replies depicting doom. Their schoolmate is actually telling the clairvoyant what to tell them. She then orchestrates an elaborate scheme to get them all to either kill each other or themselves.
The film’s original release did in fact have 13 women in it, but after a test audience failed, post-production had two of the actresses’ scenes trimmed to the point where they were barely in the film at all. One of those actresses was Entwistle. Distraught and devastated over losing her chance to be discovered, she now haunts the 50-foot tall ‘H’ in the Hollywood sign after committing suicide by jumping to her death from the top of it.
8. Flowers (2015)
A silent surreal film about six dead women who wake up in their killer’s house. They’re dead, but in a form of Purgatory, they are unable to cross over. They find themselves in separate parts of the crawlspace and each find hints to help them remember who or what they were before they were murdered.
The film is an abstract and gory as heck film with no dialogue, and no musical score. A key point in the film aside from the hints to their own past lives and the amount of gore they crawl through, is that they never cross paths with each other. The fact that there is no musical score and no dialogue means the viewer can experience Every. Single. Little. Sound.
9. Teeth (2007)
Everybody’s worst nightmare – teeth where they shouldn’t be.
Dawn grew up near a nuclear power plant so she ended up with an adaptation. But that aside for the beginning of the film, she and her friend Tobey made a pact to stay pure until marriage, but being a high school student, with hormones raging… things turn sexual after a while. She finds that her junk has teeth because of the radiation from the power plant. Sex turns deadly as the teeth bite off penises if Dawn gets angry during a sexual encounter.
A scary film that looks like something out of the “hook is left in the door” scenario of the ‘50s, “Teeth” brings you a new fear about saving yourself for marriage, and taking a different toll when it comes to violent males.
Though if you have teeth where they aren’t supposed to be, you should call a doctor.
10. Mama (2013)
Sadly, feral children happen. It’s unfortunately more common than you think. One remarkable case in history was how Rome came to be. Two twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, were born around 750 BC. Rome was named after Romulus.
This film is set in 2008, and stockbroker Jeffrey Desange has lost his finances when the market crashed. Having a breakdown, he killed his business partners, his employees, and his wife in a brutal massacre that was meant to end with him and his two daughters in a final double homicide-suicide. He takes his children to an abandoned cabin to kill them; a ghost kills him and raises the two girls, to whom they only know as Mama.
The ghost was of Edith. She was stuck in Purgatory, taking care of Lily and Victoria as her own children. The film ends with Lily dying with Edith, as she hadn’t known her birth mother, only Mama.
Javier Botet, who portrayed Mama, actually is that thin. He was born with a genetic disorder called Marfan Syndrome. The only CGI they had on him was the hair. It’s a good film but nightmares come true. Feral kids are real, ghosts are real, Mama is real.