You know you’re in conversation with someone who’s serious about the nasty end of the horror spectrum when they namedrop Martyrs. Last week, midway through a call with Glen Schofield, he mentioned the 2008 French New Extreme film as one of the inspirations for the The Callisto Protocol. In terms of subject matter, they’re not an obvious fit. As pretty much everyone has noted, the grim sci-fi of The Callisto Protocol is a spiritual successor to Dead Space, whereas Martyrs is a contemporary suburban nightmare in which [spoilers] extreme torture is inflicted by a shadowy cabal trying to sneak a preview of the afterlife. But Schofield told us he was haunted for weeks by Martyrs, and its unflinchingly gruesome effects have fed into the obsession with body horror that can be found throughout The Callisto Protocol.
