There was an AskReddit topic asking what the strangest thing that you’ve seen online was and this was the #1 answer. I don’t know what I just watched but apparently this is a full-length movie (and yes, I will be watching this movie ASAP after seeing this). There’s just so many questions that go along with this.
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.
If you park on the street, and the meter is broken, you do not get free parking. Get a ticket from another machine, or park somewhere else (if it’s an older meter). If you do not, you will get a parking ticket. These tickets are issued by the police parking enforcement, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. There are two ways to avoid getting a ticket:
1) Pay for a ticket, and leave before ticket expires.
2) Don’t park on the street without paying (when you’re supposed to).
If the meter is broken, you get a ticket for not paying for parking. Calling me up and saying: “I would have paid, but your machines don’t work” is cool, but I hope you realize that good intentions don’t pay for shit. I know that this is inconvenient, but we try our best to make sure all machines are working well. We have thousands, and if 10 don’t work, people think we’re incompetent. However, it’s definitely better than getting a police ticket and trying to go through the court system to fight it.
If that is the route you wish to take, do not ask if phone conversations are recorded and that you’re going to “tell them that I called it in that the machine was broken.” In the years I’ve worked at the monitoring station, I have never received a phone call from anyone asking me if a certain machine was out of order, and if X customer was the one to call it in. Maybe customer service gets these calls during the day, but I’ll tell you why no one calls (or should call):
1) Your opinion really doesn’t mean shit. When customers tell us that “the machine is broken” it usually translates to “I didn’t use it properly.” If a technician opened up the machine to tell us it’s broken, that’s fine, but most problems are solved when I tell customers to read the signs around them and make sure that they’re allowed to park there. The only exception to the rule is if the machine is visibly broken.
2) It doesn’t prove anything. If someone calls me up and asks me if X person made a call, the only thing it shows is that you made a call and I answered the phone. How do I know you put money into the machine? I never witnessed the transaction, how are you asking me to vouch for you? I’m not insinuating that people who call are liars, but how can I credibly tell anyone that you’re telling the truth? Unless I’m on the line and hear the transaction happening, I’m just taking your word for it, and your word don’t mean shit (see reason 1).
So there you go. Check the signs, follow the instructions, and if you call our customer service line, they probably know more than you so listen. You really can’t fuck this up.
I take half-assed notes that are supposed to be the basis of my next blog post. They’re usually something I scribble at work and then spend the next half hour thinking about. I never really write it all down because I’m paranoid about people reading my shit (which is why I post it online after), but it’s different. At work I’m #2036, I’m an unshakeable customer service rep, and in my blogs I’m a maniac who types out his rage-filled posts with his fists. To be fair, since I’ve gotten rid of the “Seeing Red” tagline, I’ve tried to avoid complaining too much, but at work you can probably catch me drawing circles vigorously into the paper like that crazy kid from The Ring.
You gotta stay composed but it’s getting harder and harder to do that now. I probably need more rest. During our softball playoff games, I flied out to centre field, off a hit that I was trying to drive into the gap. It’s just a game, but I lost it, I went back and I punched the fence post with both my hands. A left, then a right. It was incredibly stupid and my right knuckle started to swell quite bad. At night it started to bruise, but I knew nothing was broken because I could still move my hand fingers properly. I couldn’t close my hands that hard, but that was probably due to the swelling. A teammate from last year played with us as well. I remember having dinner with her and she said that she heard that I was “one of the hot heads” to look out for because I was apparently really competitive. She told me this because I apparently didn’t come across that way at all during the season, but man, did she ever get a good dose of Redford that day. Not exactly the impression I want to leave people, but whatever.
Forgive me for not updating this blog more often. I was speaking to Anthony about this and it seems that I lead a very boring life that isn’t really blogworthy. Well, it never was, but it takes an extraordinary effort on my part to make something about my life worth reading now. I’ve stopped watching movies for a bit and have instead moved onto watching TV shows and reading. I’m currently addicted to Breaking Bad, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I use one show to counter-balance the other because after watching a few episodes of Breaking Bad, you need something to lighten the mood.
I just spent the last two days at Niagara Falls and Buffalo. I went to Fallsview Casino with my mom while we were there. I don’t gamble at all. I suck at card games so the only thing I do when I play is go right on the slots. It seems really straight forward in the cartoons and the movies, you just match up 3 in a row and you win something. And when they say penny slots, you think each play is really a penny. Well! Sorta. That’s how I was playing for the first while, until I curiously pressed the 25 lines button, and then BAM, lines all over the fuckin’ screen. I couldn’t tell which were winning combinations or not, but I guess that’s the point, the machine arbitrarily gave (and took) money from me. I ended up with $40 (after putting $20 in the machines).
Afterward, we went to Buffalo. I haven’t really been to the states since I was 10. I’ve had stopovers at O’Hare (where the people who work there look really miserable), but apart from that it’s been a while. I had one goal while I was there: eat at Denny’s. Thankfully, they have them everywhere in the states, and yes, it is as good as I imagined it to be. I had Country Fried Steak and Eggs for breakfast, and then I finished my sister’s scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages after since the portions were too big for her. This proved to be the worst decision of the day as I spent the next 12 hours digesting all that food. We stopped off at the Wal-Mart and Target before heading home and while I tried to keep an open mind about America, it’s really hard to get those stereotypes out of your mind when the only 3 places you visit at Target, Wal-Mart, and Denny’s. I’ll definitely make an effort to visit as much of America as possible in the coming years.
