Review of Martyrs (2008) by Katy R — 16 Jun 2011
I'm sorry, I just didn't get this at all. It didn't really work on any level for me. Any hopes of the film being a Gallic feminist Oldboy vanish after quarter of an hour or so; taken as a horror movie, it's certainly disturbing but never particularly frightening; and it doesn't have anything profound to say, either about those people who commit unspeakable acts of cruelty or about the poor buggers on the receiving end.
If you compare this with another equally gruelling film about martyrdom, Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, at least von Trier rewards our squirming discomfort with an extraordinary, miraculous payoff.
By contrast, Pascal Laugier's use of a dying woman's epiphany as a MacGuffin is not only tasteless, cynical and intensely irritating, worst of all it's an intellectual cop-out. I can't deny the movie is extremely well made and the performances of the two female leads are superb but I would still only recommend this to connoisseurs of artsy torture porn.
This review of Martyrs (2008) was written by Katy R on 16 Jun 2011.
Martyrs has generally received mixed reviews.
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