Martyrs

Opening Date: n/a

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge
martyr (Greek μάρτυς “witness”)

Opening Statement
It took me days to summon the courage to even write about Martyrs. The French need to be quarantined before their cinematic horror films destroy us all.

Facts of the Case
A young girl, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) is found bloody, tortured and half-naked, nearly catatonic from unspoken horrors and placed into a hospital for emotional rehabilitation. As she grows up under care, she learns to function again with the help of her friend, Anna (Morjana Alaoui). The two girls become fast friends, and Anna is committed to helping Lucie purge her demons, no matter the cost.

Fifteen years later, Lucie is out for vengeance, seeking out those who kept her chained up so many years ago. With Anna’s help, she tracks down the family responsible for her torture—or so she believes—and reaps terror upon them. But the further Lucie descends into revenge, the more confusing events become for both girls. Sinister forces are at work.

The Evidence
Martyrs is destined to become an infamous film before people even get to see it. After being hit by the French equivalent of an NC-17 rating, France’s Society of Film Directors jumped on the protest wagon to attack the ratings board and get the film shown. Considering that this rating has never been dropped on a genre film in all of French cinematic rating history, it was quite the hum-drum. People are going to hear about this film, amazing things like “the film so scary that France tried to ban it!” and all manner of silliness. To set the record straight: Martyrs is a unsettling film, but it is not the penultimate horror film.

It’s something entirely worse.

There are two distinct films at work in Martyrs, and each one has their pros and cons, but both are out vying for the intellectual destruction of the other. It makes for an interesting cinematic experience to say the least; like having lunch with homicidal in-laws. The first part is a by-the-book horror film, the kind the French have been getting very good at making as of late: lots of blood, lots of gore, a crazy incongruous plot full of screams and jumps and a terrible disregard for human life. Just as the audience is starting to get warmed up to it, surprise! Another movie appears right when you would expect Martyrs to end. It runs on for a long time, brutally dragging out an already torturous horror experience into… something. It becomes something entirely uncomfortable and disorienting; something upsetting and visceral and mean.

I have never seen or heard of a horror film quite like Martyrs. Lauded and hyped-up to be “the” definitive French horror film, a film so emotionally wrenching and shocking to put the current crowning champion, Inside (À l’intérieur) out to pasture. Well, no, not even close; Inside is still the “oops-I-crapped-my-pants” champion of intense French horror in my book for on-screen violence. That’s not to say that Martyrs doesn’t terrify the hell right out of me. It just does it it in a wholly unexpected fashion.

As horror films go, Martyrs has the right stuff—a nice plot that borders on the absurd without actually being so, crazy shotgun-toting protagonists who shoot a whole lot of people full of holes, and a creepy monster tale that slowly metabolizes into view. Then, the ground opens up, and we go from the standard slash-and-scream film into something David Cronenberg would huddle in a corner after seeing. Martyrs is profoundly upsetting, in part because of this horrendous 180-degree shift; audiences reeled at the screening like they had just gotten whiplash. The cheers and cries of fear and delight at the carnage and gore and chases were soon replaced by awkward squirming, wandering gazes and uncomfortable silences. There were more than a few boos after the screening, and with good reason.

Once you have seen the film, you will understand, but without spoiling every bit of the story, it is difficult to truly explore and dissect exactly why Martyrs is so disorienting to audiences. Imagine if in the finale of The Sopranos, the cast suddenly started to sing and dance in a Rodgers and Hammerstein-styled musical number with kisses and hugs and fireworks… and then the show ended. Audiences would be in shock. Sure, there is a noticeable lack of singing, kissing and hugging in Martyrs, but this style of emotional derailment has been harnessed quite brutally. We go full-tilt from a mindless slasher film into a profound and disorienting examination about sin, pain, the afterlife, human tolerances for torture and the notion of martyrdom in one of the most uncomfortable and unsettling thirty minutes of film I have ever bore witness to.

This film digs deep. The disruptive finale tarnishes Martyrs from being a “great” film by the traditional definition, but director Pascal Laugier has sacrificed his own film in order to explore something else entirely; something primal and disturbing that transcends the simplistic set-up of his own film. Before audiences even realize it, we are trapped in a windowless room, being tortured and beaten and mutilated beyond all recognition. And that’s about as close as spoilers as I’m prepared to go.

Forget mindlessness—Martyrs tries to put a method to the madness of modern-style torture porn, and it just makes your skin crawl. The “torture porn” genre survives on its camp, its inherent absurdity and its removal from reality. Imagine the same on-screen brutality laden with existentialism and philosophical meandering as to why all these teenagers needed to be dismembered slowly, agonizingly, and with great prejudice, and then did it again and again and again. Trying to explain such madness just makes it so much more upsetting, so much more real. There’s torture, and then there’s the crazy @#$% going on in Martyrs, and the latter is so much worse.

Closing Statement
This is one of those rare occasions where a film has inspired a negative reaction in me, but in doing so has actually endeared me to the film. Many people will be turned off by the sudden unexpected tonal shift in Martyrs, expecting simply to have their external senses tortured and tweaked, but Martyrs goes much, much deeper. This is a torturous film in the most literal sense of the word; making it through is tantamount to punishment. But in a good way—really, it’s hard to explain. Fans of deeply visceral and introspective horror will definitely want to give Martyrs a look.

It is unlikely Martyrs will receive theatrical release in this country, but The Weinstein Company has purchased distribution rights to the film, so keep an eye out on the Dimension Extreme label in months to come—a DVD release is all but assured. Then, you can watch Martyrs back-to-back with Inside and never leave your house again.

The Verdict
Mind-numbingly unsettling, but a turning point in horror cinema for fans that can stomach it.

7/10