Masterful Cinema

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Martyrs is one of the creepiest, violent, and disturbing movies I've seen in a good while. It may just be that it plays on several fears of mine, but I found Martyrs to be one of the hardest movies for me to sit through. I think one of the most important aspects of the movie is it's abundance of violence and gore. Obviously it's not the only thing that makes the movie terrifying, but seeing such realistic depictions of cutting, beating, and mutilation really leave one hell of an impact. The plot of Martyrs may not be the best, but the way it's told is enough that while watching the movie, it feels like a much better story than if someone were to sit down and explain it. More than half the movie has no dialogue whatsoever for up to 10 minutes at a time, which allows the viewer to interpret most of it however they want. I can't really comment on the acting as it's a foreign film, but I can say that the music and sound design are absolutely perfect even if some of the cinematography leaves something to be desired at times. Fans of horror are probably going to enjoy Martyrs, but I would have a really hard time recommending it to anyone outside of that demographic.

Just don't watch it unless you are addicted to sadistic, torture porn Don't waste your time we have 2018 I'm confident you can find a better horror movie to watch. If we can say this is a horror movie at allI even registered to write this comment such an atrocity it is

Boring movie with trying to be some reason twist in the end. Its like evil dead just worse. I expected much much more.I recommend A Serbian fillm to watch

One thing that I have noticed about some of the reviews on this film is how bloody, gorey, violent, etc. it is and how it's violent to just be violent. I cannot agree with that statement at all. The film tells a story of revenge at first and then shifts to a psychological thriller for the second half. Lucie is the first half and her story is to make you sympathize with the character while Anna's story is meant to provoke thought. When Lucie'sstory was being shown there was a moment where I thought maybe she had killed this family of four for no reason other than she mistook them for her captors 15 years earlier. I was on the fence about it and so was Anna when she tries to help the wife escape until Lucie kills her with a hammer. It isn't until Lucie ends her own life and Anna finds a woman that has been kept down in their torture room for at least 15 years, did I realize that Lucie wasn't crazy and really truly sympathized with her character. After freeing the woman some people in all black come in and kill the girl and take Anna prisoner as they subject her to horrible experiments designed to break her will and cause her to give up all hope. After awhile she finally does this and upon "letting go" she is able to become a witness, or martyr, and see into the afterlife without having died. This is what the cult like group wanted all along. They wanted to have the knowledge of what was on the other side. The head of the group, a rather old women, comes and asks Anna what she saw. Anna whispers to her what it was but we as the audience never actually know what is said. It is after this that the woman goes into the bathroom and takes her own life. But before she does this she tells one of her servants to "keep denying" when talking about the afterlife. This statement is what the entire film is about. Denial is what keeps us going and keeps us from doing certain things. In the case of the writer it was stopping him from killing himself since he wrote the film while being horribly depressed. Not knowing what the afterlife holds helped him realize he didn't need to kill himself, because if we know what lies behind death then life would be meaningless.