A serious horror film with a little more on its mind then sick thrills, Martyrs is one stomach churning ride that wants to comment on horror itself by sucker punching you in the stomach with it. It doesn’t always work, but as the director himself said
“I don’t think you’ll enjoy this, but I do hope you’ll be moved by it.”
Fifteen years after being captured and tortured for an undefined amount of time, Louise (Mylène Jampanoï) believes she has found the people responsible for causing her all the pain. She tracks them down and makes them pay. Her best friend Anna (Morjana Alaoui) is horrified by her friend’s acts, but she’s still going to help her get out of it, no matter what it takes.
I’ll re-iterate this again, Martyrs is a brutal film. The violence starts with a bang and doesn’t let up till its final blood covered frame. None of it is over the top funny or presented to make the audience titter at the grossness of it all. It exists solely to disturb. It’s a ballsy goal, but one that has side-effects that cause near fatal blows to its cinematic framework: Due to all the violence on display, the two leads are turned into nothing more than ciphers to move the themes along. I only felt connected to them because they were stuck in a horrible situation. They looked like humans, kinda acted like humans and people being tortured is bad, so they get my sympathy. And in that sense, the first hour of the film works. Director Pascal Laugier jumps right in the middle of the story, asks you to hold on, and dives right into the muck. It’s a cinematic horror story cranked up to fifteen. Martyrs only stumbles when it reaches the point where it is essentially over. Instead of ending, the film introduces a completely different element that doesn’t feel natural to the world that we've been trapped in since the beginning. The story of a young girl broken by abuse and her disastrous attempts to deal with it are completely forgotten and are replaced instead by…well…You can see it for yourself. It’s a noble goal, but one that just didn’t work for me. The serious tone of the first half is ditched to be replaced with cartoony villains and metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. From a thematic level, on paper and even in later discussion I had with friends, it seemingly works. It’s the presentation that leaves me at a loss. ***SPOILER*** The last half of Martyrs is literally thirty minutes of torture. There’s no respite, no breather and no attempt at anything else, it’s just straight up torture. ***END SPOILER*** The point they’re trying to reach takes way too long to reach and any sympathy I had for the characters evaporated into numbness. The final Hellraiser-like apocalyptic minutes are more goofy in their sense of importance than anything else. I just wanted the movie to end, so I could mercilessly leave.
You’ll remember Martyrs. That’s a promise. If that’s enough to make you want to see the film, go for it. On a technical level, the acting, directorial choices and cinematography are top notch. This is an intelligent piece of work that only crashes when it tries to give you something more deep and profound.
NOTE: Someone vomited at the screening I was at (Don’t people READ UP ON FILMS BE FORE THEY GO SEE THEM?) and for the first half people would burst into applause every time a disturbing bit of violence would pop up. Good old humanity and its inability to deal with pain.
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