Martyrs was a strange one for me. I initially put this movie on as a bit of background noise and visuals whilst getting some stuff done around the house. The movie turned out to be too hard to ignore but by the time the action started I’d either missed the plot development (assuming of course there was a plot) or not been able to follow due to the movie being in French. I was left watching what seemed to be just an excuse to produce a movie which featured 1.5 hours of women getting tortured.
THE PLOT OF MARTYRS
Ok so time to try this film again, this time I put the subtitles on and within the first few minutes the film made a lot more sense. The film opens up at the scene of a news report shot at a hospital where Lucille has escaped some sort of abuse / torture. The child is traumatised and won’t speak about what she has been through. Obviously the child is in shock and doesn’t know / remember who abused her. Lucille befrieneds another girl of similar age to herself in what appears to be a foster home.
The movie then skips ahead 15 years where Lucille attacks a family that she believes responsible for her abuse. She enters the family home with a shotgun and kills them all. Lucille is still friends with her friend from the foster home who comes to pick her up after the revenge killing. Lucille starts to loose whatever grip she did have on her sanity and starts seeing demons. It was unclear on initial viewing if these were real or not, but after giving the film actual attention the story seems to make more sense. If nothing else the wounds inflicted by said demons are real.
What follows is some inhuman torture some of which poor Lucille inflicts on herself and some of which is real. I guess the metaphor for this film is something about fighting inner demons. The level of torture puts this film in the same realm as say the Serbian Film or Salo. It’s one of those films that can leave you feeling like you’ve died a little inside.
The movie itself (if you haven’t already gathered) is definitely on the more extreme end of horror and not something for the faint hearted. It actually felt a bit too much for me, and I’m a hardened gore fiend. I guess what separates this one from others is in most horror movies there’s a fantasy theme and the violence doesn’t seem real. This however is very realistic and confronting. In some ways its actually the viewer who can be the Martyr as the sufferring is also real for those watching it.
This is definitely not a film I’d recommend to everyone. It’s a good film but the violence is so extreme that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to handle it. If you can handle this sort of stuff this is a film that will hit you hard and rattle you at your core.
For more great horror movie reviews be sure to keep checking back on Gorenography.com regularly!