Martyrs – Movie Review
- Directed by Pascal Laugier
- Starring Morjana Alaoui, Mylane Jampanoi and Isabelle Chasse
This is the only DVD I’ve blind-bought new on its first day of release in quite some time, simply because of the furor surrounding it for the past 8 months or so, and the filmed introduction from the director is an apology for what you’re about to watch. The horror community seems to have really taken this film as their new high water mark for the genre, though it’s not as much of a scary film as one that taps into your emotions and then drags them through the mud.
I’ll be avoiding spoilers as much as possible, so I think that combined with the ambiguous ending will allow the viewer to go in with a fairly open mind and make their own assumptions about what they’ve just sat through.
Lucie is found as a young girl near a factory area, hysterical and showing signs of repeated abuse. She leads the authorities to the abandoned factory in which she was held captive; they find only the chair to which she was bound and the bucket for her waste in the room in which she was kept. The girl is uncommunicative and distant from those around her at the children’s home she’s taken to, until a young girl named Anna befriends her.
Anna looks after her roommate, but when Lucie doesn’t come down to lunch one day, she finds her cowering in the bathtub of their room, bloodied and scratched. Later that night, Lucie is awakened by strange noises, and then attacked by a shadowy, possibly female figure, that springs on her like a feral beast before we cut to black
The film jumps ahead 15 years at this point and into the home of the Belmond family, who are enjoying a normal family breakfast, the kids arguing amongst themselves, the parents nagging about school and the like, then their doorbell rings.
Lucie (Jampanoi) blasts the father with a shotgun when he answers the door, then takes out the mother when she investigates the noise. Lucie asks the son how old he is, and if he knew what his parents had done, then blows him away as well and goes looking for the young daughter (who bears a striking resemblance to a young Linda Blair circa The Exorcist), who has hidden in a bedroom. Lucie kills her as well.
Lucie phones Anna (Alaoui), telling her that she’s found the people who hurt her, but Anna is shocked to find out that she’s done anything besides possibly check out their house and agrees to come and help her. While Lucie waits on Anna to arrive, she’s again attacked by The Creature (Chasse), who she escapes by hiding in a room and locking it out. She tells the Creature that she killed Ëœthem’, hoping to pacify its bloodlust, but is attacked again when she finally sneaks out of the room.
Anna arrives and is understandably horrified by the carnage of the executed family, but goes into protective friend mode and patches up the wounds inflicted on Lucie by The Creature, then the two women move the bodies into a bathroom in a large pile.
While Anna begins to dispose of the bodies in a conveniently dug hole in the back yard, Lucie is once again attacked by The Creature; flashbacks finally reveal its origin and the film moves towards a radical change of pace for the third act.
I’m stopping there with any sort of plot information, but suffice to say the film goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting. The French continue to push the borders of onscreen violence and survival horror, but this film is much more than just another Hostel wannabe. The ideas it gets into in the final act will bear out repeated viewings, though those willing to sign on for the repetition might be few and far between, as the film is exceptionally unpleasant to watch for the last 20 minutes or so. The arthouse approach to the violence is what elevates this above the average horror film, but it’s also that Ëœmatter of fact’, clinical approach that makes it so unpleasant, there’s no entertainment value per se, just one horribly uncomfortable situation after another that leaves the viewer wincing.
The film is disturbingly well shot, everything in focus and on display for the eye to see, and I have to commend the actresses in this, who fearlessly throw themselves into one Godawful situation after another in their roles, it would be a freaky day job to have I’m sure.
Laugier has made a disturbingly effective film, though I honestly must admit that I found Inside, the other recent darling of French horror to be slightly more enjoyable (if that’s the right word to use when describing either film), just because it offers some form of catharsis, whereas this film ends on a rather ambiguous note that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. I’ve obviously drawn my own conclusions, but it’s a hotly debated topic on the web that one can follow for hours on end. I believe I actually rated Inside slightly higher than this film simply because as sorry as you feel for what happens to these girls, I never felt a specific connection to either one of them as a character. That’s not to discount anything about this film, it’s amazingly effecting, but I just found myself more involved in the plight of the lead in Inside because we knew more about her than I did these two girls, regardless of the horrors heaped upon them.
This is definitely worth a watch, but is obviously not for all tastes, as the torture sequences are quite disturbing, so proceed at your own risk.
Highly recommended.
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Martyrs is an interesting film, disturbing and thought provoking. As a horror film, it has done its job–which may be the most one should ask of a horror film. After all, what is the purpose of the horror genre? To be shocked, startled, reviled, disgusted in the safety of one’s family room or the local theater. Entertainment.
However, it is odd to me how some internet posters seem to find “greatness” in Martyrs. This is not a great film. I do like the acting, the camera work and editing are technically competent, the sound and music good–which quite a few horror films lack! Martyrs is a well-crafted movie in the Hollywood style. (It IS made in the Hollywood style–Media Studies majors get over it…) But, the grand epiphany that supposedly comes through intense and prolonged physical pain as seen in the photographs of other tortured people throughout history, although intriguing, is not supported well enough in the script to overcome my willing suspension of disbelief. The cellar hallway scene, of course, with the Cult’s leader explaining to the main character the need for torture with the photo album is almost comical in its brevity. The film would have been creepier had it delved into the occult and the mysterious efforts of alchemists…or, say, if the secret organization were financed by the Vatican. We’re not told, and I think to the film’s detriment. How can martyrdom be talked about without religion. On the other hand, how can torture be rationalized without some self-serving (most would coin this kind of enterprise as evil) intent? Of course, anyone thinking that the male torturer and the others are just “doing their jobs” would probably find “the whole Nazi thing” to be no big deal….
No. What horrifies me about this kind of film is that it glorifies a false intellectualism that treats graphic torture in a relative light. I’m not as worried about the “American Rednecks” loving this film as much as the mildly educated 20-somethings who think that they have stumbled upon something deep in this film–which they’ll probably buy and place next to their TOOL CDs€¦.
I don’t know that I’d say there’s any grand epiphanies to be had in the film, but I honestly think it strives to be more than other films that have created and kept the ‘torture porn’ (to use a label that I despise out of convenience) style of films alive recently. Whereas something like Hostel or the Saw films (which I actually like to some extent, but that’s neither here nor there) presents their gore and cruelty in such a leering “ooh, look at this, look how gross this is!” type of context, this film had more of a clinical feeling to it, which I found rather unnerving.
I think that the questions left unanswered (as to the origins of the torturers) is intended to be a part of the true horror of the piece, awful things happening to you for no discernible reason, but that obviously may or may or may not jive with your interpretations of the film.
But yeah, I would agree that for every person who watches it and finds something interesting to take away, there are going to be scads of people who just want to see something more ‘extreme’ than they’ve seen before, but I guess that’s the risk anyone takes putting out something of this nature.