Martyrs (2008)
Martyrs: Beauty in Tragedy | 4.5/5 Stars
Written by Noah Dietz: 1/12/2025
The following article contains conversation about late plot points of Martyrs. If you do not wish to have the film spoiled, please view the film and return to the article.
I find it difficult to talk about films I like. Bad movies are easy—you can talk about all manner of things. It’s easy to nitpick elements that aren’t good, but it’s much harder to allow yourself to show vulnerability while discussing something that resonates with you. Sometimes people watch horror as an escape from the world, leaning into the camp of the ’80s and ’90s to take away a little of the drudgery of the day to day. Other times, horror can push the envelope further than the average film and force you to confront uncomfortable ideas. Over the past year I’ve decided to more intentionally dive into New French Extremity to explore more of the latter point.
I finally made the choice to watch this film 16 years after its release. My friends and I were about to marathon the Puppet Master movies and, in a moment of misplaced priority, I decided to watch this first. I had been keeping track of my Letterboxd entries and saw that I was due to log my 100th film. A large part of me didn’t want Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich to hold that spot. With that knowledge, and the intention to cement a more worthy milestone, I woke up bright and early at 8 a.m., made a cup of coffee, and sat down to watch Martyrs.
Sometimes movies are on the “craziest, most fucked movies of all time” lists because they’re violent gore fests (Terrifier comes to mind), and other times it’s because the film breaks into your head and refuses to leave. I’d watched a selection of New French Extremity films before, so I figured I was in for more of the same. With my experience having seen Inside, Frontier(s) and High Tension, I felt prepared to dive in and give Martyrs the time it deserved.
There aren’t many films that I watch and immediately struggle with the concept of ever watching them again. There’s plenty of films I’ll never return to for one reason or another, but the list of films I don’t necessarily want to see again that also take up major brain real estate is much smaller. Martyrs holds the dubious honor of sitting with Antichrist and Irreversible when it comes to wildly affecting things I have very little desire to return to.
From the start of the film we understand Lucie suffers from survivor's guilt. By the 45-minute point we’ve learned that she escaped a truly awful situation, but we don’t know too much beyond that. We learn, or at least assume, the family she has killed were responsible for her lifelong trauma, but there’s enough doubt about what’s happening that you wonder how much of it could even possibly be real. Unfortunately, we do learn that everything she was telling us was real and even worse than she had thought. Of course not the hallucinated woman, but what is real is far more devious than anything Lucie probably had feared. The family Lucie killed has a basement where they’re torturing yet another victim, and with Lucie’s death, Anna is left alone to deal with the fallout of everything. As it turns out, not only was the target of Lucie’s revenge involved, but they were a part of a greater organization devoted to very specific methods of abuse to try and force the creation of a “martyr.” A martyr, in this case, is an individual who sees past the veil between life and death. If properly coaxed and cared for, the organization hopes they could even pass on information from the afterlife. We’re told they have been trying to trigger this for 17 years, with only three other martyrs being made previously. Even with that, there were none who had been able to relay anything before they passed on.
Anna does become a martyr for these people, and our mysterious string puller known only as “Mademoiselle” takes her testimony. As the greater group comes together to share in the exciting news, it’s clear Mademoiselle has decided the knowledge of the afterlife is too great—or horrible—to share. After a conversation through a door to one of her peers, she asks him if he could imagine what the afterlife is like. When he says he can’t, she tells him to “keep doubting,” a single gunshot ringing out as the last thing we hear in the film.
For the first portion, Martyrs could be a film about how your past haunts you. A film about the cycle of abuse, and how lack of support can leave you to hurt people just as you were hurt. After we wrap the first third of the film, we really lock into the meat and potatoes of what Martyrs is bringing for us. Out are the themes of the opening, and in are the themes of aristocratic abuse of those who “don’t matter” in the pursuit of selfish goals.
The number of think pieces and outright tirades about this movie have already said more than I ever could. I wish I could better explain why this sits with me, but all I have is this pile of words where I try to convey why this brutally cruel film resonated with me on such a core level. There’s a lot of very compelling storytelling here. I love the fading in and out of the disconnected, clinical abuse scenes smudging our already tenuous knowledge of the passing of time. I love how long it takes us to see the faces of her “caretakers,” since they really don’t matter. I also love how the plot ties in the themes of abuse from the opening with the themes of aristocracy from the end. Surely all the suffering we go through has to be worth something, right? Surely it’s not all just for the ambition of others. The misery our leads go through must have meaning beyond placating an impossible curiosity, otherwise what was the point?
Though a difficult film to recommend, I still will do just that. If you feel secure in your journey through horror and think you can stomach some mean violence with a shockingly solid arc, I feel Martyrs is a film that’s worth your time and energy. Not for the faint of heart, and maybe I’ve attached too much meaning to it, but I’m here nonetheless saying I loved it just as much on my second viewing.