My body language said it all. “How was it?”, a close friend enquired, as I stared into space and repeatedly glanced over my shoulder, clearly shaken. On the outside, I appeared agitated; every little noise provoking an immediate response. Inside though, I was truly shocked at what I’d just witnessed. A new archetype of contemporary horror? The scariest movie of the decade? Possibly, although these clichés are thrown around far too often nowadays. However, to truly elaborate how scared I was, I genuinely found my pause-breaks to write review notes therapeutic, juxtaposing the immense tension I was enduring. Welcome to the latest French-horror craze, Martyrs: Pascal Laugier’s brutal, unforgiving ode to art-house terror.
After opening with a shocking exposition of a child, Lucie, running down an industrial road, evidently abused, Martyrs throws you right into the deep end, jumping forward fifteen years to a seemingly ordinary family of four going about their everyday routines. They appear normal enough, although if you leave the cinema with only one moral issue in your head, it’ll be the fallibility of normality. Then, the narrative throws us off track as they are all (including a girl of around thirteen) brutally shot in the safety of their own homes in what appears to be a revenge killing. But this normal, civilised family surely didn’t deserve this… right? Surely these killings are just the actions of a disturbed young adult, haunted by her flashbacks, seeking retribution for her horrific childhood experiences? This is a question that I must abstain from answering, for it would not only spoil the tremendously intelligent narrative, but is actually genuinely difficult to answer.
And that’s what is so beautiful about Martyrs; it provokes debate and discussion, regardless of your overall response to it, long after the credits roll. One of the more interesting quotes I read recently stated that the movie is ‘gorenography for Guardian readers’, and I couldn’t concur more. The movie blends masses of gore for the contemporary generation, whilst still providing an intellectually and emotionally charged narrative, together with some beautiful editing to cater for the niche art-house audience. One of the more horrific scenes in the movie sees our protagonist (or at least we think she is) repeatedly beat a woman’s head to a pulp, cutting between close-ups of the mutilated head giving way to the tension, and mid-shot’s of the killer as she forces her hammer into the poor soul’s skull. This really is genuinely unsettling stuff, making even the more recent Saw films seem lean in comparison. But this isn’t just gore for the sake of gore; film fanatics will take note of the stunning, unpredictable cuts in editing, with a complete absence of non-diegetic sound in the sequence making it all the more visceral.
However, it isn’t just explicit gore that makes Martyrs as disturbing as it is. In fact, compared to the sheer sense of foreboding created by the more psychological fear prominent, the grotesque sequences don’t even come close. No amount of fancy lexis can sum up the sheer intensity formed by Lucie’s horrific visions, with an unknown inner-assailant pursuing her throughout the first act of the movie. Loneliness for Lucie brings connotations of an encounter with her horrific antagonist, and in ‘Pavlov’s dog’ style, the minute we are exposed to a voyeuristic sequence with Lucy, the fear factor cranks up several notches. My mid-sequence notes of “Bathroom scene is just too intense – I’m nearly in tears – if it wasn’t for pausing to write notes Id have shit my keks” should be enough to illustrate just how horrfic this movie can be, especially coming from a man who is rarely genuinely scared by psychological means nowadays.
Nevertheless, Martyrs just wouldn’t but quite as chilling if it wasn’t for two fantastic performances from Mylène Jampanoï as our first-act ‘red-herring’ protagonist, Lucie, and Morjana Alaoui, as Lucie’s only friend, and lifelong guardian, Anna (the real protagonist). In portraying two characters that spend the majority of the film either crying, being tortured, or venting their fury, Jampanoï and Alaoui remain strong throughout their indisputably fatiguing roles. Furthermore, the on-screen chemistry between the couple is amazing, inferring that both girls equally need one another, acknowledging the dominant theme of companionship in horror, or more so how the lack of it essentially leads to your downfall. Martyrs digs even deeper than usual, with implications of a romance between the couple; another topic promoting post-film debate.
Moreover, despite an unpredictable combination of linear and restricted narration being high on the agenda, the plot somehow finds itself progressing from a first act psychological-mystery to a shocking torture montage with a constant religious semantic field. However, it is in this climax that Martyrs hits its first stumbling block, as a 20-minute montage of a girl enduring horrific torture for ‘the greater good’ doesn’t only juxtapose the revenge-thriller of the first half, but it’s at this point that the plot becomes just a little bit nonsensical. It just feels as if a movie already established as exceedingly clever is aiming just a little too high. The resolution is surprisingly upbeat though, and the religious themes touched upon, although unoriginal, are nice little touches.
As for nice touches in terms of cinematography, well, Martyrs is packed to the brim with contrapuntal sound, juxtaposing edits, and the like. One of the finest examples of editing sees the flicker of a light in the present indicate a temporal change, leading onto a series of flashbacks full of narrative clues. There’s also some serious ‘wtf’ moments in the cinematography, with an extreme close-up of an iris rapidly transforming into a extensive sequence set in the interior of the eye. Martyrs just boasts so many neat little touches, the majority of which also proving the basis for discussion, such as the emphasis of cleanliness, as close-ups show hands being washed a plethora of times during the movie. These also hold individual connotations of cleaning metaphorical hands of blood… but that’s another matter altogether.
If this is the future of horror, then I’m very much prepared to be desensitized to it if classics like Martyrs are born more frequently.
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An intense, visceral art-house horror that puts the viewer through just as much pain as the ill-fated cast… Stunning performances, striking cinematography and a continually twisting narrative establish Martyrs as the archetype for all future horror.
5/5
