by Lucy SlessorReview: Martyrs (2008)
Martyrs is a commendable piece of film work, brutal beyond words, harrowing and brilliant all at once – if you have the stomach to sit through ninety-nine minutes of torture that is incomprehensible to most of us.
The film’s plot follows the story of a young girl called Lucie, who we see in the opening credits at the age of eleven, running and screaming in a bloodied vest and pants. She has cuts all over her body, bleeding, bruised eyes and a shaved and scarred head.
Not a sight that will leave you easily, and this instantly reminded me of the famous photograph taken by Nick Ut, in 1972 of a young girl screaming and naked with her body burning from a napalm attack near a school in Vietnam.
The film goes on to take us forward in time. Lucie has been placed into state care with another young girl called Anna. With patience and love, Anna manages to coax the traumatised Lucie into a friendship. Lucie will only speak to Anna, which we find out when one of the Doctors attempts to question Anna about what happened to Lucie during her abduction and captivity.
We then find ourselves being transported fifteen years into the future, a family is sitting down for breakfast, talking and laughing amongst themselves, a sister who looks about fourteen years old is joking with her older brother and teasing him, when they hear a knock at the door. The father answers it and is met by a shotgun-wielding hooded figure who shoots him through the stomach. The figure goes on to brutally murder each family member one by one. After which we learn that the hooded gunman is actually an adult Lucie.
After Lucie has murdered all of them, she uses the home phone to call a very panicked Anna, who keeps asking her where she is and what has she done, “she was only meant to watch”. If you find this hard to stomach, be warned that while the first hour is brutal, bloody and disturbing, nothing will prepare you for what is to come in the second half of the film.
As the plot starts to unravel we begin to understand that the mentally unstable and traumatised Lucie believes she has discovered the whereabouts of those who captured and tortured her, leading her into the house of the slaughtered family.
(There are many plot twists involved in this chapter of the story, but I want to leave you some surprises!)
The devoted Anna, who fiercely loves Lucie to the core, is shocked, stunned and appalled by the massacre she finds, when arriving at the house. Finding Lucie screaming that someone has attacked her, Anna’s focus instantly shifts intently onto her and the caregiver in her instantly steps forward, focusing on the angry, scared and volatile girl.
Once more without giving too much of the plot away, time passes and we watch as Anna tries to clean up after Lucie, doing her best to dispose of the bodies and retain some sanity in the hellish predicament she finds herself in. As stress, trauma and ghosts of the past catch up with the unstable Lucie, she turns on herself, culminating in her committing suicide by cutting her own throat. It is in this time that we see the depth of Anna’s love for Lucie in more than a caregiving capacity, as we begin to realise Anna was deeply in love with her.
Stunned, broken and in shock , Anna cradles her as she dies, and takes the body inside the house where she lays her down on the sofa, and swaddles her. After Lucie’s death, Anna rings her estranged mother and as she barrages her with questions, Anna hears a noise like a woman wailing. She puts the phone down and goes to investigate.
While walking through a corridor lined with huge pictures of torture victims with rapturous expressions on their faces, she finds herself in a hidden underground labyrinth of laboratory cells. During her investigation, she comes across the room that Lucie has described being held captive in as a child. A dark, damp room with a chair over a bucket for relieving herself, and the manacles that bound her. Up until this point, Anna has been uncertain of Lucie’s judgements and state of mind but upon seeing this, she finally realises the horrific truth of her reality.
The film, leading up to this point, has been inter-spliced with images of Lucie’s torture while held captive. And although these are undeniably effective, it is nothing compared to what is yet to come. As Anna, aghast and repulsed with the reality before her, starts to beg forgiveness for her disbelief, she hears agonised and tormented wails. Following the voice she comes across another cell with an emaciated, tortured woman in it. Her head is bound in a metal helmet riveted through her skull that prevents her from seeing, and she is fitted with a crude metal chastity belt.
As a horror fan, I have watched a lot of films, but find the whole SAW “torture porn” themes quite revolting and unnecessary. However, it would be a hard push to describe this film, although focusing on torture, as torture porn. It holds an extremely stark, cold, realism in the inhuman acts that are displayed. There is no hard core music playing, no typical horror screams by scantily clad teenagers, no masked figures and no delight shown in the horror that ensues.
Just sheer horrific evil, performed by emotionless human beings, without any form of empathy.
The woman found by Anna has been brutalised and dehumanised beyond repair, and I defy anyone to sit through this scene without being sickened and shocked.
Anna tries to aid her escape and eventually gains her trust enough to lead her out, into the house, where she tries to tend to the copious wounds all over her body. Once in a bath where the woman screams and thrashes around in agony, Anna manages to calm her enough to rest, before she attempts to remove the helmet riveted to her skull.
For me, this scene was one of the most unbearable, as we watch this poor human, scream in agony, fear and anguish, However the cleverness of this film, is that it made me think and reflect on real torture victims of wars.
After the helmet has been removed, Anna covers the woman’s face in a towel to help calm her and holds her close. Once she relaxes Anna returns to the site of Lucie’s dead body, and pleads for forgiveness for not believing her. Exhausted, she falls asleep.
She awakens to hear screams from the woman, who has managed to leave the bath. Anna follows the noise and the blood stains on the walls, to find her with a knife, trying to cut off her arm. Anna struggles with her to try and remove the knife, but through sheer panic and fury, the woman knocks Anna to the floor and then turns to her as if to stab her. A gunshot is fired from behind, and the woman’s body falls on top of the terrified Anna.
Standing in front of her, is a woman with a shotgun, dressed entirely in black, her face is cold and remorseless, and there are other figures in black wandering through the house looking for the family’s bodies. The woman with the gun questions Anna, asking who killed the family.
Anna complies and tells them it was Lucie. The woman tells her they have been trying to call the house and another of the team finds the phone on the counter and tells the woman who seems to be heading this team. She coldly demands to know who Anna is, grabbing her by the hair and roughly dragging her across the room, downstairs to the hallway leading to the cells, where she then handcuffs Anna to a railing and leaves her there. Anna, exhausted and terrified, falls asleep.
Sometime later she is awoken by footsteps, as the woman and her team return. This time with a folding table and two chairs, it seems likely at this stage that an interrogation is about to take place. Anna is forced to sit down opposite a woman who is seemingly in her seventies who is known only as “Mademoiselle”. The old woman initially tackles Anna about Lucie who managed to escape them fifteen years ago, when they were “less organised” She then explains to Anna that she is part of religious initiate who believe that by creating “Martyrs” through intense pain and suffering, they will gain an insight into transcendence and what lies beyond death.
Anna is then kept as a test subject herself, after the Mademoiselle has explained how although they have worked with various age groups including children, that young women make the best martyrs from their experience.
At this point, I shall not give you any clues to the last half hour of this film, but if you are like me, you will appreciate this incredible and undeniably harrowing and traumatic film, as a true tour-de-force of cinematic expressionism.
Not in any way for the weak of heart.