A weekend, movie review: Martyrs!

First off, happy freakin' weekend everyone! I hope yall's weekend is going as good & as relaxing as mine.

Tonight, my husband and I watched the French film, Martyrs. It was released in 2008 & directed/written by Pascal Laugier. You should be able to rent this flick, unrated, from most respectable movie rental establishments. I highly recommend you do this as soon as possible! Or just buy it, if you are a gore/horror junkie like I am.

There is no easy way to sum up the whole of this picture. I've heard it compared to the HORRIBLE, Eli Roth (douche-bag) directed Hostel...and I agree to a small degree. The only similarities that the two movies share is the notion of an organization capturing and torturing people. Martyrs, though went all the way with the depravity and skipped out completely on the frat boy bullshit. I'd say this shares more with Rosemary's Baby than that Hostel flick.

This movie transcends the common notions of what horror can be. Finally...a new horror film that I can really sink my teeth into. Is France the new place to look out for in the world of horror? Could be...maybe not though, who knows.

This movie gets going from the very beginning & does not let up until the very end. If you are squeamish at all, I'd say stay away from this one. If not, again, I highly recommend it.

SPOILERS!




Like I said, this movie transcends the common horror genre cliches. In fact, this movie reminds a lot of Aja's High Tension, which is also another French horror gem. The big difference here though, is that Aja and co. can't write an original screenplay to save their lives. Excellent filmmakers, unimaginative writer's.

Pascal Laugier keeps you on the edge of your seat. There is NO way to predict where this movie is headed for as it progresses. The end is freaking awesome....but then again the whole movie is.

So, it starts out like a typical revenge flick. You've got these two girls, one of which had been tortured and somehow escaped from some abandoned building. This girl appears to be haunted and tormented by a ghost or some freakish woman from hell. At one point I assumed it could have been her, in her psychosis, personified (ala High Tension). The other girl seems fairly well adjusted and acts as her care giver.

Jump to 15 years later and we're into full on revenge mode. We get to see a family of four gunned down by the more tormented of the two girls. Her name is Lucie and she has a penchant for double barreled shotguns and straight razors. As Lucie falls deeper into her psychosis, the other girl, Anna, is left to pick up the pieces...which pretty much means the disposing of dead bodies.

Lucie, still going deeper into madness, is confronted by her ghostly demon. We, at this point, have learned that this "ghost" is the image of a tortured girl she had left to die years ago while making her own escape. So the guilt manifests itself as a ghost. Anna never sees the ghost, just Lucie cutting away at her own flesh.

So...after Lucie's apparent suicide, Anna is still in the house and accidentally finds a hidden passageway that leads to a hidden, sterile basement. Turns out that there is yet ANOTHER one of these tortured girl's which Anna tries her best to help.

THEN, we see like 5 people dressed in black rushing into the house, gunning down the recently rescued girl, removing all the bodies, and just leaving us in a general state of awe.

All you need to know from this point on, is that there is this somewhat cult like group of people hellbent on manufacturing martyrs. What does that mean exactly? Just watch the movie and find out for yourselves, darlins!


xoxoxo
luv,
Jessie