Martyrs

Introduction

Following the recent French aesthetic for realistic and harrowing horror films, Pascal Laugier was asked if he had a genre piece in the pipeline. He didn't, but drew up a treatment for Martyrs which was accepted and work began in earnest.


The film starts with a young girl, about 10 years old, running in an abandoned industrial estate in only a vest and knickers and covered in blood. We next see her in an orphanage where her friend, Anna, is being shown footage of her ordeal in the hope that she can coax some information from the traumatised youngster and find those responsible. It seems that Lucie hasn't left her demons behind as there is some malevolent creature at the home. Suddenly the film flashes forward 15 years where Lucie believes she has found the people who kept her imprisoned and, rather than talking to them, quickly dispatches them, and their children, with a shotgun. Anna is waiting in a car nearby and, when she receives a call from Lucie, goes to the house to help clear up the carnage and deal with Lucie.
 
At about the hour mark, Martyrs takes a sharp left at the traffic lights, taking you into far more dark and disturbing territory.
 

Video

Despite some slight grain, which appears to be intentional, this is a tremendous picture, with some of the most realistic, and therefore unsettling, special effects make up and prosthetics I've seen. The colours are excellent, particularly the reds of the copious blood, and contrast levels are impressive, so there's no lack of definition in darker scenes.
 

Audio
As you'd expect from a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track, the sound is tremendous with excellent use of the surrounds, really pumping up the tension which can be suddenly and unexpectedly relieved, when the LFEs come into play. The soundtrack, by the wonderfully named band Seppuku Paradigm, can be both delicate and overwhelming, really complementing the images.
 

Extra Features

The menu doesn't look much, with only The Making Of, Interview With Pascal Laugier and Interview With Benoît Lestang, but the making of is a healthy 86 minutes long and covers most elements of pre-production and the shoot, showing the extreme lengths the principle cast went through when rehearsing the fight scenes and what a tyrant Laugier was on set. The piece is dedicated to Lestang, who sadly died in 2008.
 

The two interviews run for over 10 minutes each and, in his, Pascal Laugier talks about how he became a filmmaker, developed Martyrs and plenty of other interesting stuff. The interview with Benoît Lestang takes place in his workshop, where he shows you around and points out interesting moulds, masks and make up effects. It was slightly strange watching this, having found out less than half an hour before that he had died shortly after this was filmed.
 

Conclusion

Martyrs is a harrowing watch, and this is coming from someone who's seen their fair share of nasty horror films. The film is extraordinarily well directed by Pascal Laugier, whose screenplay is also impressive, but the performance of its two leads, especially Morjana Alaoui are exceptional, adding to the visceral nature of the film.
 
It is unremitting in the horror, as every time you think that it's over, something else comes along, sometimes quite unexpected. I was anticipating a much more gory film, but it goes (relatively) light on the blood-letting in favour of prolonged violence which can be shocking and unrelenting at times, and this is a film that you experience both physically and emotionally - some of it is just like a gut-punch.


That said, I enjoyed it, but then again I enjoyed other extreme European 'ordeal horrors' like Inside, The Ordeal and [REC] and it reminds me a little of the more intense horrors of the late 1960s and early '70s like Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - especially the latter which dwelt on psychological horror with less violence and gore than you think happens. If you like these sort of films and tough horror, where things are grim and you know they're not going to end well, then this is well worth a look and probably a blind buy.