Martyrs - A Review

Martyrs.

This movie was purely horrifying. I recognize it for what it is, amazing. A piece of cinematic art. Everything had a purpose, and it didn’t hold back. But that being said, it is the only film that has ever had such a profound effect on me. I was genuinely disturbed by this film to the point I couldn’t sleep. I was covering my eyes, yelling throughout. Saying it’s a piece of art, yes, I still think it, but I never want to see it again

From here on, SPOILER ALERT. You have been WARNED. No giving away the ending, though, only like the first 20 min in all honesty.

The movie starts with a girl escaping from her captors. Good enough. Seems like the start of a Hostel-esque film with traces of El Orfanato (2007) laced within. Lucie, played by Mylene Jampanoi, was the girl who escaped and since having escaped suffers under the presence of a creature who relentlessly cuts her and attacks her. Whilst at what I think is an orphanage of some sort, she befriends a girl named Anna, played by Morjana El Alaoui. The first segment of the movie is cut abruptly short with Lucie being attacked by the creature that haunts her.

Next scene is an average family. Mother, Father, Daughter and Son. The most horrifying thing is that this is made to make you almost attached to the characters in such a short amount of time.  They are made out to be people; not caricatures. They are a family. So, they’re having breakfast on sunday, and the doorbell rings. We’re only about 15 minutes in at this point. The father goes to the door, opens it, and after a breif pause, he gets shot in the chest with a shotgun by Lucie. She goes through the house and absolutely slaughters the family with a cold brutality. At a point stopping the son, asking him his age. Asking him if he knew what his parents did, before shooting him. Mother, Son, Father. All dead. And she traps the girl, frightened under a bed and shoots her.

Now, I think I’m getting a little detailed, so I’ll stop. Anna comes, helps her dispose the bodies. One thing I have to say is the portrayals of Anna and Lucie are superb in this movie to the a point where I felt chilled. They were real. Struggling. Fighting. This movie is handled with such a brutality. It doesn’t romanticize violence as many horror films have in North America. I can laugh at most of the torture porn that is expelled today by the industry.  But this. It’s just so uncomfortable to watch. The torture is cold, calculating, systematic. You feel it’s brutality. It makes you want to cry.

They don’t shy away from the violence and gore. The amount of blood. Staples that are a good inch long being removed from a girl’s scalps. A woman trying to cut off her arms. Repeatedly bashing her head in a wall. Being beaten until unrecognizeable. Lucie slitting her own throat, ear to ear. 

One part I love, but hate about it, love from a cinematic standpoint, hate from a viewer standpoint, are the false starts. The hope it gives then abruptly rips away. I want to do that in a film one day. But Jesus. It was just a soul breaking experience. I felt empty after watching this film. Utterly destroyed inside. No amount of Spongebob could cure it. Even days after watching it, I still feel a patch of myself missing. 

The French are very skilled in taking a nihilistic approach and putting you into the film, making you feel the pain of the characters. This film can only be described as a pinnacle of it.

All in all, it’s a very good film. I could only watch it again if I shut it off after a certain point. It honestly gets unbearable. I’ve watched Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo hardly batting an eyelash. It left me with a distinct ‘what the fuck’ feeling afterwards, yes, but it didn’t render in me the soul crushing effect, the cold disconnection that this movie did. As a film connoisseur, I’d say you should watch it. But only if you can stand to. This is not for the weak of heart, soul, or mind. 

I actually had tickets to see this back when it was roaming the convention circuit and was at Tiff, but I never ended up going because I was sick. I’m honestly glad I didn’t. My anxiety was much worse and I wasn’t as strong. I’d probably have had to leave of just ended up crying. It’s an exhausting film.

If you want to have a miniature heart attack if you’ve seen the film, go check out the wiki page and check out the info on the remake. Fucking Kristin Stewart. She could NEVER do this. EVER. She lacks emotional depth. She can’t act. But that, that is another story.