I often tell people that the scariest movie is the one you are afraid to see. The one that takes on a life of its own inside your mind as something worse than it actually really is. 

But, for about six years of my life that statement did not hold true. Because you see, I’d seen Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs. And for me, the scariest movie was actually Martyrs.

It is a film I both love and never wanted to see again, but forced myself to rewatch before completing this review. And now I feel the shackles of this film have finally been taken off- which is a good thing because I actually own a copy of Martyrs on DVD.

I once read a critic give high praise to Martyrs before writing in his next sentence that he could not recommend the film because once you see Martyrs you cannot unsee it. The article itself was not specifically about Martyrs, but people in the comments section picked up on the few sentences that were, writing things like “who praises a film and then tells people not to see it?” or “That’s so hypocritical. What an irresponsible thing to say.” Of course, I couldn’t tell if those people who called the critic out had actually seen Martyrs themselves, but I, personally, kind of understand where the critic was coming from- even if I don’t particularly like the way he articulated it. That six year spell it held over me was real.

Martyrs is a modern horror masterpiece, but it also is extreme in its depictions of torture and is heavy on scenes of abuse to young women. Martyrs is not the film you see if you are just starting to learn about the best films in horror. Martyrs is the film you see after you have seen so many great horrors that you have started to feel desensitized to images of brutality caught on celluloid and desperately want to regain that feeling of a time when horror films actually could scare or disturb you. Because given this film’s reputation, it probably will.

But with the right audience, Martyrs is a film that should be seen because it is a truly unique cinematic experience and films like this are rare to find.

Though director Pascal Laugier has rejected the label, Martyrs is commonly considered to be part of the New French Extremity movement. In fact, I am even willing to call it the peak of the New French Extremity movement, which is not faint praise knowing that it is a list which contains many of my favourite modern horror films, including Inside, Irreversible and Raw. But Martyrs stands out because it is oddly reflective in its brutality, acting as sort of a justification for why movies of this nature should exist in the first place.

Needless to say, Martyrs‘ run through the festival circuit in 2008 came littered with reports of walkouts or people getting physically ill. Before hitting theaters in France, a massive battle ensued to get the film a 16+ rating. Originally, the Commission of Classification listed it at 18+, a rating reserved mostly for pornos, but the film unions in France were so vocal in their condemnation of what they deemed as censorship that the Minister of Culture told the commission to change the rating.

Of course, when you put a film as incredibly vile and nihilistic as Martyrs into the world, it’s going to earn a reputation, but unlike a lot of extreme horrors, Martyrs finds itself regularly defended by critics and cinephiles for being an intelligent film with a purpose to the violence and I have often found Martyrs included in lists of the greatest horror films of all time. In 2015, Blumhouse even co-produced its own horrendous, ill-advised American remake because…? The remake, with its 4.0 User Score (the original’s score is 7.0) seems only to exist to make horror fans angry. So yeah, please don’t mistake the 2015 remake for Laugier’s 2008 original.

Martyrs starts with the image of a bloody young girl hobbling through an industrial area after she has evaded her capturers. Later, we learn that the authorities have investigated the area but the abductors have long fled. We are told that Lucie, the girl, was never raped, but she was starved and repeatedly beaten for over a year by her tormentors.

Through a series of what appears to be archival home videos made by the orphanage Lucie was placed in, we see that she grows up isolated, withdrawn and is occasionally hostile towards the other children- that is until a younger girl named Anna befriends her. With no leads, investigators speak to Anna about what Lucie might have revealed to her, but Anna can offer nothing of use. 

That night, we learn of Lucie’s frightening hallucinations in one very, very scary sequence. And we are only at the eight minute mark. Cue title card.

As a side note- I am a firm believer that a horror film should produce at least one effective jump scare early to put us on edge. If we know a director can create effective jump scares at the start of a film, it doesn’t really matter if they do it again. We still watch in fear they might. Martyrs is the reason I hold that belief. 

After the title card, we jump forward in time fifteen years and are introduced to a new family. This new family is like many you might typically find victimized in horror films. There is a mother and father and two teenage children- one boy and one girl. They appear as a normal upper-middle-class family, squabbling over how much the son has cost them in education. How does this story intersect with the eight minute introduction of Anna and Lucie? 

Expectation. Subversion. Repeat. Strap in.

I once likened Martyrs to Antichrist because both films contain narrative shifts that challenge our expectations while making us reevaluate what we saw before. The first hour of Martyrs shifts directions about every ten minutes, and since the story is entirely original and the antagonist unclear it’s hard to predict where it’s going to go next. 

And I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s around the 50 minute mark that broke me, and probably so many other viewers, the first time I viewed the film. Everything before this point is intense and gory. Everything after this point is torture…literally.  But honestly, by the time you get to this point, you’re so emotionally drained that the torture scenes almost feel like a relief. And then we are given a marvelously ambiguous conclusion that is more clever than it has any right to be considering all the nauseating nastiness we endured to get there.

God, I love this film.

In an interview, Laugier said with Martyrs he wanted the audience to “feel real pain” and to “share it as part of an honest process [of] communion.” That’s part of what makes Martyr’s different from so many other horror films. Horror directors are out to scare, but few are really trying to make a film that is intentionally intended to traumatize its audience. Most that try just overindulge in gross out material. And when film emerges that get too excessive, they usually get relegated to the fringe corners of extreme horror canon where only a small niche group curious people will ever see them- like where all the Guinea Pig films hang out. That Martyr’s is so well revered is a testament to the fact that Laugier found a way to push past the line of decency while still making a film that has intelligent things to say about how people respond to differently to trauma and questions the idea of suffering as a way to obtaining a closeness to God- and this provides a purpose to our own suffering through his film.

So I guess in the end, I’m a better person for having survived Martyrs. Thank you Laugier for traumatizing me.

Except the film’s extraordinary nihilism kind of defeats this purpose, and depending on how you interpret the end, there may actually be no point to anything after all.

So fuck you Laugier for traumatizing me. (Actually, I prefer this interpretation over the more positive one.)

I should add that Morjana Alaouri and Mylène Jampanoï do a great job at portraying the grown up Anna and Lucie, especially given the limited dialogue they both have in the film. Both performances are heavily reliant on facial expressions to convey feelings and motivations and they both do this expertly- especially Alaouri.

But for all my praise, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention that Laugier doesn’t have the best reputation when directing young female leads. In a blog. I have read Jampanoï complain that she often felt “lost on set” and Alaouri admits that she was given very little feedback during shooting. I also have a hard time forgetting about the permanent scars Taylor Hickson received after she was told to punch through a plate of glass while filming Incident in a Ghostland. My point is that if you are going to make a career creating films that explore trauma using young female actresses, you probably need to be more careful that you are not partially traumatizing them yourself.

That said, Martyrs is a horror film like no other, but it is also not for everybody. If you’re a horror veteran and have handled extreme content before, this is must-see material. For everybody else, watch with caution. Martyrs will test your limits.