Sometimes, a movie is hyped too much and categorised as the most violent, most disturbing, most extreme movie ever made. Martyrs fits that bill. 

This isn’t the movie’s fault. I blame the people who have amped it up over the years. Maybe if I’d watched Martyrs 16 years ago, it would have been a more visceral experience. But viewed today—given all the horror the world is offering up free of charge—the film’s nihilistic message feels a little, “Yeah, so what?”*

As a child, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) was tortured for months, only just escaping with her life. At an orphanage, she befriends Anna (Morjana Alaoui). But the trauma is profound, and several years later, having left home, Lucie hunts down her captors: two seemingly ordinary people with grown kids. Lucie, against Anna’s better judgement, slaughters the family. But it’s what Anna finds under the house that changes everything.

The film’s first half is an intense and challenging portrayal of trauma. Laugier’s camera is constantly moving, and the editing is razor-sharp. I’ve said before that I don’t like shaky cam, but here, it elevates the tension, the violence, and the pain. It’s powerful and disturbing. If the movie stopped at the halfway mark, I’d be calling Martyrs a dark, frank portrait of deeply grained trauma.

But it doesn’t end there, and it’s in the second half where the movie stumbles for me. In principle, I don’t have an issue with a secret group of very old, wealthy French people who believe that through pure pain and suffering, especially the pain and suffering of young women, transcendence can be found.** But how it’s meshed into the movie tonally changes the film. It becomes less about trauma and more about torture porn. And, yes, it’s disturbing and sickening, but it all feels rather meaningless as well. I know that’s the point. This is a movie about nihilism. But nihilism, for nihilism’s sake, seems empty to me.***

The first half of the movie is a complex, difficult portrayal of how pain and trauma can shape us into monsters. The second half is just about the monsters and, as a result, is far less interesting or layered.

*There’s sicker, more savage filmss out there. I’m not flexing here. I happen to have watched a fuck-tonne of splatter gore. Once you’ve seen August Underground or Slaughtered Vomit Dolls or Cannibal Holocaust or Salo, or A Serbian Film, a film needs to be fucking foul to push the needle. 

**The misogyny implicit in this is, of course, repulsive, but also very much the point.

** I appreciate that what we’re seeing on the screen reflects Laugier’s headspace at the time. But this shouldn’t skew my reaction to the movie.