‘Martyrs’ and the Horrific Exploration of What Lies Beyond Pain and Trauma
Pascal Laugier’s ferocious torture porn remains one of the darkest horrors ever made
Pascal Laugier’s 2008 vile torture porn nightmare, Martyrs — which turned 15 earlier this month — begins with a beaten-up girl running out of an industrial building and screaming for help. It’s an apt cold open because nothing could insinuate (or prepare the viewer) what's about to come in the next 90 minutes more viscerally than the universal reaction to fear and desperation. This brief yet effective sequence is a perfect segue into the film's central story and its main themes of pain, suffering, and trauma.
But given that Martyrs isn’t a traditional horror by any means, its exposition actually marks the end to something rather than being a jumping-off point. The first act of Laugier’s screenplay intentionally tells a story in reverse, painstakingly designed to confuse and shock us from the get-go before it can empty and destroy our souls. Yet Martyrs isn’t a cheap splatter aiming for shock value and sensation — Laugier denied it to be associated with similarly violent French New Extremity films like Inside (À l'intérieur) and Haute Tension. It’s easy to understand, however, why so many refer to it as the pinnacle of this ruthless subgenre that thrives on elaborate brutality and sadism often connected to sexual urges.
After the unsettling cold open, the plot shifts into archive footage to introduce us to Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï), the girl we just saw escape, who was kidnapped and tortured by a couple for nearly a year before she was placed in an orphanage. Growing up there, deeply traumatized and haunted by what happened, she found a friend in another girl her age, Anna (Morjana Alaoui), who treated her with kindness and understanding. 15 years later, all grown-up and thirsting for revenge, Lucie shows up at the house she believes to be her torturers’ home. That’s when the plot truly kicks into gear, and the film blasts itself on us with unflinching cruelty.
Lucie massacres the entire family of four (dad, mom, daughter, and son) with a shotgun and no hesitation. Time might've shaped the physical appearance of her abductors, but she has no doubt it’s them. Anna, waiting in a car not far from the place, isn't all that sure, though. When Lucie calls her after the killing is done, Anna asks if she made sure that it was really them. Devastated while fighting back tears, Lucie mumbles, “Why don’t you believe me?”
Laugier’s approach to Lucie’s cold-blooded revenge is clever and deliberate. Although we believe her, the unwavering ferocity with which she murders the parents and their likely innocent kids creates an uncomfortable ambivalence in us. We just don’t know what exactly they did to her that would justify such a merciless retaliation. We sense that they deserved their fate, but due to the nature of the reverse narrative, we simply can’t feel the level of satisfaction revenge horrors usually aim for. It’s not how the genre works. But Laugier’s vision is so grimly profound and transcendent that it demands unconventional storytelling to strive for maximum effect.
Lucie suffers from hallucinations, but she isn’t crazy. Her haunting visions of a horridly brutalized and cut-up woman come from survivor's guilt and trauma. Through a flashback, we learn that when she escaped her kidnappers, she had to leave behind another victim to die. The woman she (and the viewer) sees repeatedly as a terrifying monster is a by-product of her guilty conscience and the overwhelming trauma she can’t process. She inflicts self-harm on Lucie for abandoning her to save herself instead. It’s a soul-crushing emotional weight Lucie simply can’t carry anymore — and one that’s likely responsible for the screaming voice in her head, driving her to murder these people in the hope of some kind of redemption. But since violence only begets violence, Lucie eventually realizes that she can't get rid of her demon and goes for the only possible option left to end her unendurable torment: suicide.
Through the only survivor, Anna — who just lost the person she loved the most in her life — Laugier provides us the missing piece of Lucie’s story that served as motivation and justification for her actions. In other words: the worst is yet to come. Anna will have to pay for her disbelief with unimaginable pain and suffering to finally comprehend what Lucie went through and had to endure for one and a half decades.
The darkness that descends in Martyrs' second and third acts is designed to swallow the viewer whole. It’s not a coincidence it’s taken me 15 years to muster up the courage to watch this film, and that’s not because I’m skittish when it comes to gory horrors. Even with that much time to mentally prepare, I must say that Laugier’s feature earned its horrific reputation. Once Anna makes her way to the house's basement and finds another female victim with a metal device nailed into her head, the film's viciousness goes next level. The pure evil we witness turns from scary and gory to bleak and depressing. Laugier slowly but inevitably instills the black-hearted notion in us that his feature is the embodiment of human depravity determined to go all the way.
When the people behind a secret organization arrive to clean up the mess Lucie and Anna have made, their leader, only referred to as Mademoiselle (Catherine Begin), sits down with Anna to reveal their purpose. In her frighteningly cold and detailed speech, she claims their goal isn't to create victims. Through methodical and systematic torture, they attempt to turn innocent people into "martyrs" who reach a transcendent stage while bearing relentless pain for a long time. Essentially, they try to cheat death and learn what lies beyond it before the subject actually dies. With this appalling revelation, Laugier gives meaning to the movie's immoral savagery and a complex, if despicable, incentive to evil.
By personifying wickedness, we're forced to face the deepest black hole of human beings, tormenting innocent women and children for their own “entertainment.” In an interview with the auteur, Laugier said that while writing the script, he “realized that violence and the brutality was the point of the film.” So, no matter how desperately we want these people to be punished, destroyed, and burn in hell for eternity, their objective remains pure. Regardless of the various inhumane methods of torture they employ, their intention never gets corrupted by sexual perversion or other kinds of deviance. Any potential sexual motive (Anna’s romantic approach to Lucie is rejected) is eliminated throughout the movie to prevent contaminating the depiction of evil. We have to experience all stages of suffering alongside Anna to understand the degree of moral blackness these people possess and represent.
Martyrs' third and most grueling act is so heavy on the soul that it becomes physically challenging to watch. It's not just the intensity of repulsive violence that’s nearly impossible to bear but also the mental and emotional destruction of someone’s will. We watch Anna losing her humanness bit by bit until the person in her completely disappears. The depth of sorrow Martyrs evokes can only be compared to the raw and heart-breaking depiction of Nazi concentration camps in World War II movies — simply nothing else comes close.
However, in the dedicated execution of its vision — prepared to go beyond every boundary that there is — Martyrs is an unlikely masterpiece of horror if one that's extremely difficult to praise sincerely. When you watch it, it sucks every ounce of hope you have in humanity out of you, making you want to get as far away from it as possible. And yet the film’s final moments will leave you both conflicted and compelled to think about them for days if not weeks. Because you can't accept the possible victory of evil. In its last scene, however, Laugier offers a tiny portion of consolation (after the total demolition of your heart and soul) with the death of a character who deserved their fate the most. But it’s hardly enough to climb out of hell’s darkest corner where this movie has taken you and left you for dead.
This week, I reviewed AppleTV+’s new horror fairytale, The Changeling, for Paste Magazine (which was sadly a huge letdown), and the upcoming Season 2 of Welcome to Wrexham, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s delightful sports docu-series (which was as great as I hoped for).
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When you love dark movies, and then discover that there's something darker. Excellent review!