Martyrs

One of the comments on the torrent were: “if you want to lose your girlfriend, watch this with her to the end.” Yup! That’s exactly why I’m watching this movie.

Movie: Martyrs
Director: Pascal Laugier
Why It’s Messed Up: It’s another one of those intensely violent torture porn movies. I don’t think it’ll be as messed up as some of the other stuff I’ve watched, but we’ll see.

Pre-Film

Before Anthony told me about this film I heard about it from Philip, who in turn heard it from Andrew. I think everyone watched this already, but since it’s something that is clearly outside of my comfort zone, I decided to give it a shot today.

Running Diary

- Soundtrack is done by Seppuku Paradigm. That’s an omen.
- I hate the sound of women crying or wailing, and that’s how the film starts.
- And that’s how it’s continuing. It’s the most unsettling sound to me. A woman just massacred a family, and apparently she’s the victim.
- Where did this feral half-naked chick come from? I get the feeling that she’s a product of the main girl’s tortured psyche, but the girl just got her back raked with a knife. As Tobias Funke will tell you, that spot near the middle of your back is a tricky place to reach.
- The French girls are pretty sexy though.
- “I have to go take a look.” No you don’t! Stupid curious people are exactly why horror movies happen.
- Yes let’s put my fingerprints all over the crime scene. Thatta girl. First thing you gotta do when you find dead bodies in a house is touch everything in the house. And stay at the crime scene. Good job ladies.
- Where is this house? Six gun shots, and a woman dragging a family into a mass grave later, no one has visited this house.
- And now they’re sleeping in the murder house, because, killing four people is not serious enough of a crime to flee the house for. C’mon!
- So from what I can gather so far, it’s about a girl who escaped a dungeon when she was a kid, and has been traumatized by the fact that there was a girl there she could not have saved. Yes, the premise of this movie is about a woman exacting revenge from when she was tortured as a child. Charming.
- Yup, feral girl is figment of her imagination. This movie is actually getting pretty silly, I’m not really as disturbed.
- As of this moment, the two craziest movies I’ve ever watched in my life are still Visitor Q, and Salo.
- It just got really violent. Holy shit, who thinks of this stuff? Girl is removing this device that is nailed to her head. Nailed.
- It tries to be more than it is. It’s still torture porn to me. So exploitative.
- Alright, here come the torture scenes. A 200 pound guy just beat the shit out of our protagonist here.
- Wow, she shaved her head, I wonder if she knew the movie was going to be crap before she agreed to do this.
- I’m not enjoying this at all, but it’s not bothering me either.
- Did they just flay her? WHY?! I just started laughing because she looks like Robocop without his helmet on after all her skin is removed (graphic photo alert)

Post-Film

Why is she tortured? Because there’s something transcendental about pain that will apparently give her some insight into the afterlife? I guess the closer you get to death, the more you might see about the next step. They could have avoided all this and got a hold of some DMT instead. I mean, really, torture gets people to speak to God? If you are getting flayed, and God doesn’t miracle your ass out of there, then he either doesn’t care about you or doesn’t exist (I can’t tell which of those two realities is worse for Christians). He has a plan for everyone, and it includes you getting your skin removed, while the people from Jersey Shore become millionaires by being douchebags? I know He created the Universe and all, but His plan looks pretty shitty right now.

So what’s the moral of the story here? It doesn’t have to be some Aesop fable, where they tell you that slow and steady wins the race, but there’s got to be a point to all of this. Whenever I see torture in movies, I think, ok, the character will overcome this and become an amazing person. Trial by fire, right? Well, yeah, I suppose, but not in this movie. This girl is broken. She was exploited, just how this movie was exploitative, and they both are going to end in a shitty way.