In 2022, when the Oscar -winning filmmaker Jordan Peele shared some of his favorite horror films, the list was as fascinating and insightful as his own films. It contained expected and beloved classics, names like The brilliant, a nightmare on the street ElmAnd Candy. But among them was a film that stood out, a film that is solid as one of the most difficult and disturbing films ever made, a film that many viewers cannot resolve to finish. It was a film that would have brought the audience out in the middle of his first because the real horror he presented was not easy to digest.

This film was the infamous French creation of 2008 of Pascal Laugier, Martyrs. His inclusion on a list from a director known for his social commentary immediately points out that there is more to Martyrs that its reputation for brutality and graphics. Martyrs is a surprisingly intelligent and artistically ambitious work. Under its difficult surface, it is a psychological horror film that uses its shocking story to ask great uncomfortable questions about trauma, faith and human capacity of suffering, which makes it a masterpiece of the genre for those who are courageous enough to see it until its unforgettable end.

Martyrs is Jordan Peele’s favorite “Matted Up” ”

Martyrs is often considered a key film in what criticisms have nicknamed the “new French end”, a wave of transgressive French cinema from the early 2000s which was not afraid to push its limits with its content. Films like Irreversible, dark and secret thingsand the last addition, Titaniumwere part of this era, which defines non-conventionality in cinema with its graphic and gore visuals and its taboo approach. Director Pascal Laugier certainly does this in MartyrsBut it was the ideas behind the brutality of the film that probably attracted the attention of a filmmaker like Jordan Peele.

Peele’s work is celebrated to use the kind of horror to examine deep social and psychological ideas. To go out used horror to talk about racism and loss of identity; We explored class and duality ideas. In a similar way, Martyrs Use his premise of extreme horror to look at something deeper: the exploitation of suffering. In fact, for its role in WePeele suggested many films to Lupita Nyong’o to watch her preparation, and Martyrs was one of them.

Secret society at the heart of the film does not see its victims, Lucie and Anna, as people. He considers them as experiences, such as ships to break in the pursuit of a philosophical objective. Their pain is treated as a resource, something to measure and harvest to achieve “illumination” for an elite group of people who will never dare to be at the reception of this agony. This idea of ​​the suffering of a group used to benefit another is a powerful and uncomfortable social criticism that connects with the type of horror in layers present in Peele’s own work.

Related

The Western horror of Jordan Peele with 83% on rotten tomatoes dominates streaming graphics 3 years later

The New Western horror film in 2022 by Jordan Peele with Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer dominate streaming cards 3 years later.

The film opens by presenting the public to a young girl, Lucie, who has just escaped from an abandoned slaughterhouse where she was chosen captive and tortured. She is deeply traumatized and unable to explain what happened to her. In the orphanage where she is taken, she became friends with another girl, Anna, who becomes her only source of comfort and confidence. But even Anna was not enough to stop the demonic woman who came to haunt her at night, and after which Lucie generally finds herself with bleeding cuts in various places on her body.

The film then jumps 15 years. Lucie, still haunted, believes that she found her childhood torments and, with her dedicated friend Anna trained in chaos, she enters a normal suburban house and massacre the whole family, a couple and their son and her daughter, with a shotgun. This act of violence starts which initially resembles a story of brutal revenge, but the film quickly reveals that it is after something very foreign and more philosophical.

The first half of the film is a powerful look at the lasting effects of trauma, because Lucie is hunted down by the demonic woman, who soon forms in all her form as a grotesque and emaciated creature which was, in fact, a terrifying manifestation of her own guilt for having left another tortured girl behind captivity all these years ago. It is not a simple story of ghosts; It is a story about memory and guilt to become a literal monster. And it is shown to the public in the most honest, harsh, brutal and graphic way. In 2022, when Peele classified his best horror films for Fear: the House of HorrorHe labeled Martyrs Like a “meat” film. He said:

Why so many people cannot finish martyrs

Martyrs will test your limits as a human being

Martyrs is structured in a way that deliberately tests the endurance of its audience, which is a major reason why there remains an unfinished film for many. The film begins to feel like a brutal revenge thriller centered on Lucie and his psychological torment. But just when the public thinks he understands what kind of film he watches, the film takes a hard turn on the left, and this is where many viewers find their limit.

Related

Despite the box office flop, this 16-year-old cult horror film could finally get the rest he deserves

Jennifer’s body, with Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox, did not have the love he deserved during his original release.

After Lucie’s story touched a tragic end in a very graphic and violent way, her friend Anna discovered an underground complex hidden under the house where Lucie had just triggered her anger. While Anna goes deeply in the dungeon, she sees a naked woman, who is only the skin and bones, and a metal banner is attached to her skull with screws and nuts. Anna tries to release her. She gives him a bath and opens her blindfolded eyes, which ends up translating into a bloodbath, and the woman dies after having experienced a manic episode.

Now, suddenly, the house is flooded by strange and well -dressed people who capture Anna, and the film turns into a chaotic history of psychological haunt in cold, systematic and almost scientific torture. The public is presented to a new character, known as Mademoiselle, a woman who is in particular appearance. She has been the head of society who has been kidding young women for decades, subjecting them to unspeakable abuses in the conviction that this process can create “martyrs”, individuals who, on the verge of death, can transcend their physical suffering and have an overview of life after life. Anna then becomes their next subject.

The second half of the film is a flawless and almost clinical representation of this process. Regarding blood, blood and torture, it is just to say that it cannot make sure that. Violence is no longer frantic or born of rage; It is methodical and useful, which makes it even more difficult to look at. The authors are not serial killers with twisted obsessions; These are calm and well -dressed people who treat torture as a scientific experience. This removes any feeling of traditional horror film “Fun” or Catharsis, forcing the spectator to the position of a helpless witness of an unbearable bureaucratic cruelty.

A review of the fans perfectly captured this feeling, saying that watching the film made them “sick, frightened, disgusted, angry, fear, anxious, confused, hopeless”. And the film is designed to ensure that the spectator feels helpless and accomplice. It questions the very act of looking at the horror by asking, as another fan suggested it, “Why did you pay me to show you what suffering looks like?” It is this relentless commitment to show the suffering process without cutting that pushes many viewers to extinguish the film or to move away, which many even do 17 years later.

The martyrs have a frightening but somewhat satisfactory end

For those who cross the second exhausting half of the film, Martyrs offers an ending that is not justice but of a scary mystery. This end is what really cements the infamous heritage of the film and the student of the simple shock cinema to a piece of art of philosophical horror. After being subjected to an unimaginable torment, Anna seems to reach “the transcendent state” that secret society has sought in many of their experiences. His eyes, clear and distant, seem to look in another world. Mademoiselle is brought to her side with the ultimate goal of the project: Anna murmurs what she saw in Mademoiselle’s ear. This is the moment when the whole sadistic project was for: the answer to what is beyond death.

Related

10 great horror films PG-13 even unconditional fans like

The best horror films PG-13 offer a lot to appreciate, even for fans of the richest stuff.

What is happening next is what makes the end so brilliant and so very debated. Shortly after, an elite group of people gathered in the house where Anna was held, and they are told that “Anna was able to see beyond death. And after returning from the state, she became a martyr. ” While the disciples come together to finally hear the revelation, Mademoiselle is calmly preparing. Her assistant asks if she is ready to share the news. Instead of speaking, Mademoiselle, with a virgin expression and tears in her eyes, said only: “Continue to doubt”, before removing a pistol and committing suicide.

The secret dies with her. This refusal to give an answer to the public is a deliberate and powerful choice of director Pascal Laugier, who, inspired by stories focused on the idea like The twilight area, was more interested in triggering a conversation than providing a closure. The act leaves the viewers a permanent and haunting question: what does Anna say? The most common reading is nihilist: she has not seen anything, and the devastating realization that the cruel work of her life was for nothing led Mademoiselle to suicide.

However, another more subversive interpretation suggests that Anna’s last words were an act of ultimate resistance, a last act of revenge, where she may have described something beautiful but told Mademoiselle that, as an executioner, she could never be part of it, thus destroying the whole system of beliefs from the inside. The film presents a group of rich and privileged elites who, having apparently exhausted all terrestrial experiences, now wish to conquer the final border: life after death.

However, their method to achieve this “illumination” is not that of a personal sacrifice or a spiritual discipline. Instead, they inflict an unimaginable suffering on an oppressed group, the young women they take away, using their torment as a tool to obtain the answers they want. The film seems to transmit a clear, but tacit, here: those who wish to find God or understand what is beyond human scope can never achieve it by torturing another human being.

Related

Only real horror fans can manage this stomach barattage thriller

The hearing of Takashi Miike is a truly horrible experience that launched the kind of film “Gonzo” and has cemented in the history of cinema.

In real life, the path to true spiritual wisdom, as shown by millions of monks through history, consists in leaving the material world behind and leading to your own mind and body, a journey of self -renunciation. Worship in Martyrs exactly the opposite; They engage in their intellectual curiosity by forcing sacrifice to others. Mademoiselle’s suicide, in this regard, can be considered overwhelmingly that their whole cruel project was a philosophical dead end.

Whatever he learned, she was acquired through such a fundamentally corrupt method that she could not be supported or shared, making the film a powerful moral declaration disguised as a brutal horror film. So, Martyrs is not a film to recommend lightly. It is a really difficult and memorable watch. However, it is also a reference in extreme cinema, not only for its ability to shock, but for its power to provoke thought.

Martyrs

Release date

September 3, 2008

Execution time

99 minutes

• 

  Morjana Alaoui

  Anna Assaoui

• 

  Mylène Jampanoi

  Lucie Jurin

• 

  Catherine Bégin

  Miss

•