'Martyrs' (2008) Movie Review: Cruelty to the Extreme

Pascal Laugier is the writter and director of this gore movie, Martyrs, about brutality. Not suitable for all kinds of audiences by the way.

Martyrs is a portrait about brutality and physical abuse. We warn you, it is pretty explicit. Not for all guts.

Storyline

Two girls are kidnapped and tortured when they are young. When they grow up, they decide to get even with their torturers and murder all the family. Only one of them survives and in the basement she finds a new tortured girl when suddenly someone bursts in on them and kidnaps the girl to subject her to a brutal nightmare.

The Movie

All sorts of things have been told about this film, for some it is the best horror movie of the Twentieth century and for others it is a total disaster with no plot and just gratuitous brutality. Yes, the first and last pretensión of this movie is to make us feel repulsion and we do, and at the end we open our eyes at all the brutality we have just contemplated.

With these pretensions, this could never be a philosophic reflection after another, but a brutal carnaje scene after scene until we arribe at the second part, that leads us (or that is what it aims to do) to the confines of suffering.

As a plot it is okay and we will say so now: this movie gets what is is after. If you are searching for a pleasant afternoon with your companion, this might not be the best option.

Our Opinion

It should be watched as one of the most brutal movies in the history of cinema. It has its plot and its stuff.

Deeply unpleasant, but that is what it attempts and manages to get.

Director

Pascal Laugier is a former assistant to director Christophe Gans, having directed the “making-of” documentary about Gans’ 2001 film, Brotherhood of the Wolf (Laugier also starred in the film). He has written and directed the fantasy-horror feature films Saint Ange, Martyrs, and The Tall Man. Laugier has been associated with the New French Extremity movement.