A French Fried Somewhere In Betwixt ... Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS

Lucie was only a victim. Like all the others...

Martyrs (2008) is neither the best nor the worst French shocker in recent years. Numero uno is still Haute Tension (aka. High Tension), while the old front-runner Baby Blood being the most entertaining one. For some seriously sub-par efforts, though, I would reserve a couple of seats for Baise-Moi (no, Rape/Revenge is not made the way it used to) and the recently produced Vertige (and, no we’re not going to say anything about this sleeper).

Anyway, as it appears to me you could either love or hate Martyrs. Personally, ambiguous feelings dominate my view of this film: It’s divided into two main, clearly distinct, parts – the first being the interesting and frightening one; the second being the derivative, boring one. Those of you who have already seen it might just have a clue of what I mean.

But here you have it: The now grown-up, tortured child returns to seek her revenge. She is followed by the mental spectre of a fellow sufferer she couldn’t help while busy making her escape; this phantom from the past forcing her to inflict pain and death in order to make amends. Then she dies, having avenged herself and her ghostly companion. So what’s next? The other part, then: The victim’s friend comes along, cannot save the day, and is herself taken captive by the religious sect with the only goal to create true martyrs who, through immense suffering, will tell them about the mysteries of what lies beyond death. And this, did I forget to tell you (?), is the lesser part of the movie: Not really bad, but quite boring (at least during the second viewing) – we are carried through some vicious tortures that leave nothing to the imagination. The ending, though arguably ripped from the far superior Los sin nombre, is still a good thing since it somewhat redeems the degenerating plot and gives us the usual, welcome feeling of “Hardy-har-har! You all got what they deserved, suckers... Well most you ... I guess.”

All-in-all, I still believe Martyrs is worth seeing, perhaps even owning – especially in a Noble kind of way, don’t you think?