DVD Review: Martyrs
Martyrs (2008)
Studio: The Weinstein Company
DVD Release Date: April 28, 2009
Directed By: Pascal Laugier
Cast: Morjana Alaoui, Mylène Jampanoï, Isabelle Chasse, Catherine Begin & Emilie Miskdjian
Brutal As Hell Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Review By: Annie Riordan
A little girl is found wandering by the side of the road, her wasted body showing signs of severe neglect, starvation and torture. Little Lucie claims not to remember who kidnapped her and held her prisoner in a filthy warehouse for over a year, leaving the police with little to go on. The case remains unsolved and Lucie is placed in an orphanage where she exhibits violent antisocial behavior and suffers from paranoid delusions. Amazingly however, she accepts the friendship of a younger girl named Anna, who takes on the role of surrogate mother to the unstable girl.
Fifteen years later, an ordinary family sits down to breakfast in their pleasant suburban home. The ring of the doorbell interrupts their casual conversation and father goes to answer it. Within minutes, the entire family is dead as Lucie enters the house, double barrel shotgun in hand. Standing amid the slaughter in a peaceful house now transformed into an abattoir, Lucie calls Anna and reports that she has killed them all. These people, she claims, are the ones who kidnapped and tortured her fifteen years earlier.
A horrified Anna rushes to the scene, still firm in her devotion to Lucie but aware of the fact that Lucie is sick and has finally gone too far. Or has she? As the girls linger at the crime scene, the past slowly begins to vomit up its secrets and a far more horrible truth emerges. What really happened in that warehouse room fifteen years ago? Anna is about to find out, and what she thought was the end is really just a terrible beginning.
Martyrs is the latest offering in the blood dimmed tide washing out of France, aiming itself at fans of Haute Tension, Inside, Frontier(s) and Calvaire. Where the horror and violence of those films end, Martyrs begins, taking the viewer on an excruciating ride of mercilessly escalating torment. Just when you think the film can’t get any more bloody, violent and/or unbearable, it does. And then it gets even worse. And then it reaches a crescendo of pain and horror so exquisite that it becomes absolutely beautiful. Martyrs is the cinematic equivalent of the crucifixion: so cruel, sickening and enlightening that you cannot look away, no matter how much you might want to.
This is the movie that 1999’s Los Sin Nombre (The Nameless) wishes it could have been. The muddy backstory of that movie is made crystal clear in this one; fiercely illuminated and painstakingly dissected to the point where you’ll find yourself wishing it would stop – please stop already, I can’t take anymore! But Martyrs doesn’t stop, and if you can force yourself to bear it, the payoff is as inspirational as a baptism.
The mostly female cast is absolutely amazing with the doe-eyed Morjana Alaoui a standout as the pure and compassionate Anna. Her wide-eyed innocence remains intact throughout the horror she endures. And believe me, the horror is intensely upsetting. The squeamish among you may wish to skip this film as skulls are bludgeoned into goo, guts spill forth from blasted torsos, torture devices rip skin away from bone and so on. I’m pretty desensitized as far as gore goes, but even I felt the overwhelming urge to vomit at one point. This is as harsh as harsh can get. Consider yourselves warned.
If you can stomach it, Martyrs is a work of art: bold, bloody, nauseating, vicious and merciless, but ultimately, breathtakingly beautiful.
View Trailer:
