Martyrs – A Review

It’s Friday the 13th, and obviously tonight you’re gonna want to watch a horror movie…right? If you decide you want to get spooked tonight, sit back and plug in french film Martyrs (2008) by Pascal Laugier. Martyrs not only will having you gripping the side of the couch, it will also allow you to reflect on what it means to transcend, and how you can potentially get there. Martyrs moves very quickly with new twists happening what seems like every 15 minutes, so the best way to go into this film is exactly how I did…with little information and the mentality that “this horror movie isn’t gonna take me there *sigh*”. Oh and before we go any further, you have to know that this movie is EXTREMELY VIOLENT & FULL OF GORE. ENJOY :)

Here’s what I CAN tell you: Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) was tortured multiple people throughout her tween years, and the only reason she is still alive into early adulthood is because of a mistake her tormentor made allowing her to escape. Alongside her BFF Anna (Morjana Alaoui) who she met in one of the institutions for children (Mental or maybe it was an orphanage), they find the suppose people who are responsible for Lucie’s demonic delusions and murder them and their kids. Through the first part of the film Lucie’s pain and guilt literally transforms into a real gollum like creature, which allows us to almost feel the pain she must be suffereing day in day out because of the torture she suffered.

It doesn’t take long for you to start sympathizing with Lucie over murdering these people, but you start to lose faith when Anna comes over to the house to help her clean up this mess. Anna doesn’t completely doubt Lucie regarding who these people are, but just in the way she carries herself you can tell that she is re-thinking her lifelong friendship with Lucie. After Anna is almost done cleaning up Lucie’s mess, and Lucie has almost finally confronted what has haunted her for years, the film take a dramatic twist.

I am not going to go into any detail about what happens other then their is a basement torture room…a room much more soficticated then the ones you have heard about on the news. Not only does the film completely fuck you over in what you thought was going to happen, but all the torturing and the reasons behind it start to make sense. Martyrs is a story of life and death and how under the right circumstances young women are able to reach transcendence.

I highly recommend this film, especially if you’ve been looking for a horror film that will actual scare you and make you think. It took roughly 2 hours of browsing video stores and online to search out the right film that hopefully wasn’t going to disappoint. Shockingly I was right :\