Martyrs is a 2008 psychological horror film written and directed by Pascal Laugier. The film stars Morjana Alaoui, Mylène Jampanoï, and Catherine Bégin. Set in 1986, it follows the story of Lucie, a traumatized young woman who seeks revenge against individuals who abducted and tortured her as a child. Her actions, aided by her friend Anna, also a victim of abuse, result in dire consequences.
Laugier wrote the screenplay for Martyrs during a period in which he was suicidal and experiencing clinical depression, inspiring him to "make a movie about pain." He was particularly influenced by Catholicism while writing the film. Martyrs was an international co-production between France and Canada. Principal photography began in Montreal in 2007.
Martyrs screened at the French film market Marché du Film in May 2008, where it incited audience walkouts due to its graphic and disturbing content. After screening at numerous film festivals, it was theatrically released in France on 3 September 2008, where it faced notable controversy. The French film ratings board, Le commission de classification des œuvres cinématographiques, initially granted it an 18+ rating, forbidding audience members under the age of eighteen from seeing the film. Following an appeal by the film's producers, this was overturned by the French Minister of Culture, and its rating was reduced to 16+.
Critical responses to Martyrs were highly polarized, with some film critics condemning it as a violent splatter film, while others praised it for its thematic content. It has been cited by some critics as being part of the New French Extremity movement, an association Laugier denounced. Film scholars have observed that the film features themes of revenge, Catholic sainthood, transcendence, and existentialism. In 2017, IGN named it one of the best horror films of all time, ranking it number 32 in a list of 100 films, while Rolling Stone included it in a 2021 list of the greatest horror films of the 21st century. It is regarded as a contemporary classic of the horror genre. An American-produced remake of the same name, written by Mark L. Smith, was released in 2015.
Plot In 1971, Lucie Jurin escapes from a slaughterhouse where she has been imprisoned and tortured for over a year. She is placed in an orphanage, where she befriends Anna Assaoui. One day, Anna finds Lucie in a bathtub, her arm covered in cuts. Lucie begs Anna not to tell anyone. Anna embraces her, imploring her not to cut herself. Lucie responds that she did not do it. Later, Lucie is attacked by a disfigured, demonic woman.
15 years later, Lucie invades the home of a seemingly normal family, the Belfonds, whom she believes were involved in her torture as a child, and methodically kills each of them with a shotgun. She calls Anna and gives her the house's address. While waiting for Anna to arrive, the demonic woman attacks Lucie, stabbing her hand and cutting her back. Lucie flees the house and encounters Anna, who tends to her injuries and enters the house despite Lucie's warning not to. Anna is horrified by the carnage, but decides to help Lucie clean the crime scene and dispose of the bodies. Anna kisses Lucie, who rejects her. Lucie is once again attacked by the woman and hides with Anna in a bedroom. Lucie recalls her escape, during which she ran from a pleading fellow prisoner who begged her for help. Anna discovers the Belfond mother is still alive and tries to help her escape, but Lucie catches them and beats the mother to death with a hammer. The demonic woman again attacks Lucie, but Anna only sees Lucie hurting herself; the woman resembles the victim that Lucie left behind at the slaughterhouse and is a psychological manifestation of Lucie's guilt. Lucie then runs outside and kills herself by slitting her own throat.
The following morning, Anna, while on the phone with her estranged, abusive mother, discovers a secret passageway in the home's living room, leading to a subterranean chamber containing illuminated photographs of torture, and a living, brutalized, emaciated woman, proving Lucie's claims about the Belfonds. Anna attempts to help the woman, who is hysterical and nonverbal. She removes a steel blindfold that has been stapled to the woman's skull and helps bathe her, only to later find her mutilating her arm with a knife. A group of people arrives at the house, kills the woman, and captures Anna. The group's leader, identified only as Mademoiselle, explains that they belong to a secret society seeking to uncover the secrets of the afterlife by creating "martyrs". They capture individuals and inflict on them systematic acts of torture, believing that their physical suffering will result in transcendental insight into the world beyond. Though they have only produced "victims" who succumbed to the pain and were unable to speak, the group is determined to create martyrs who accept their suffering and report their visions of the afterlife.
Anna becomes the group's newest subject. After a period of being brutally beaten and degraded, she is told that she has progressed further than any other subject and reached the "final stage", demonstrating her acceptance of her fate. She is surgically flayed alive and reportedly enters an "ecstatic" state. Mademoiselle arrives, eager to learn Anna's secrets, and Anna whispers into her ear. Members of the society gather at the house to pay veneration to Anna for her martyrdom and hear Mademoiselle's announcement of the groundbreaking testimony. While waiting for Mademoiselle, who is in the bathroom, Étienne, an assistant, asks her from outside the door if what Anna said was clear. She unequivocally confirms and asks him in turn if he can imagine what comes after death. After he says no, Mademoiselle produces a handgun, tells him to "keep doubting," and shoots herself.
An intertitle explains that "martyr" is Greek for "witness". The film ends with a shot of Anna lying catatonic on a table, seemingly looking at something far away. During the credits, home movies of Anna and Lucie as children are shown.
Cast
Themes
Critic Maitland McDonagh notes that the film contains prominent themes of Roman Catholic sainthood and martyrdom in its exploration of spiritual transcendence through physical pain. Film scholar Brian H. Collins also observes that the secret society depicted in the film appears to be "vaguely Catholic", and its practices in attempting to elicit religious ecstasy through physical suffering and torture mimic the martyrdom of numerous Roman Catholic saints.
Film scholar Ruth McPhee writes in Female Masochism in Film: Sexuality, Ethics and Aesthetics (2016) that Anna's characterization "accords closely to the conventions of the narratives of Christian saints and martyrs." McPhee further notes that Anna's experiences as a captive of the secret society mimic the hagiographic accounts of Saint Catherine, and cites the film as "almost unsurpassed in the relentless and visceral extremity of the suffering shown."
Laugier himself stated that he intended to make the film's audience "feel real pain" and to "share it as part of an honest process [of] communion... It was a very Catholic process. I have a very Catholic mind." In a 2009 interview with Electric Sheep magazine, he stated that he feels "the Western world is sick... Horror cinema allowed me to express this in a very direct way. Martyrs is almost a work of prospective fiction that shows a dying world, almost like a pre-apocalypse. It's a world where evil triumphed a long time ago, where consciences have died out under the reign of money and where people spend their time hurting one another. It's a metaphor, of course, but the film describes things that are not that far from what we're experiencing today."
The film's graphic violence resulted in it being associated with the New French Extremity movement, which Laugier vocally denounced. Literary professor Gwendolyn Audrey Foster similarly challenges the sentiment that Martyrs belongs in this category, writing that its "nihilism is complete and impossible to dismiss, making it a far different experience from other extreme horror films", also citing Laugier's statement that the film exists in a world "in which evil triumphed a long time ago". Grace Britten of The Film Magazine also notes that the film features nihilistic and "gut-wrenching existentialist" themes.
Foster notes Laugier's intent to force the film's audience to bear witness to the pain of the violence represented, writing that its viewers "become martyrs in a sense". Though Foster feels that the film retains some ambiguity in its conclusion, she writes, "in the end, it seems clear to me that there is no afterlife, no union with God, and no ascendance into the heaven for the final victim in Martyrs, even as it conjures up iconic images of female martyrdom, such as that of Bernini's sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1652), or Carl Th. Dreyer's film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928)."
Production Development Writer-director Pascal Laugier, who had previously made his directorial debut with the supernatural horror film Saint Ange (2005), wrote the screenplay for Martyrs after being inspired by Eli Roth's Hostel (2005), and intended to "make a movie about pain." Laugier stated he was in a severely depressed state at the time of writing the film, and was nearly suicidal. Visually, he was partly inspired by Carl Theodore Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and based the film's final shot on a still of the dying Joan of Arc (portrayed by Renée Jeanne Falconetti), an image he pasted to the final page of the screenplay. He was also inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).
On pitching the project, Laugier commented that "the film was rejected by all the big French studios, by a lot of actresses, too. […] The film was really supported by Canal+, the only television channel in France that still finances some unusual projects".
Casting
Mylène Jampanoï, who was cast as Lucie, was drawn to the project after being profoundly affected by the screenplay. "When I chose this movie, my agent told me maybe it's not a good choice as an actress," she recalled. "'You should maybe start with a comedy!' But the script was amazing, really amazing. I knew this would be a film that people would either love or hate". Laugier said he was attracted to Jampanoï's charisma and that she was almost an "immediate choice". "When [Mylène] enters a room, the temperature changes, people behave differently. It would be impossible to be a film director and not feel that", Laugier said. "Moreover, her natural energy is pretty dark. She’s dangerous and dark, full of passionate contradictions."
Prior to shooting, Laugier had Jampanoï watch Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) to draw inspiration from the lead performances of Isabelle Adjani and Jamie Lee Curtis, respectively.
Morjana Alaoui, who was cast as Anna, was also attracted to the project after being impressed by its screenplay: "The first time I read the script, I was just like, 'Wow. I have to be a part of this.' After Pascal cast me as Anna, I started rereading it and every page I was like, 'Oh my God. How am I going to do this? I'm gonna die'". Laugier cast Alaoui after another actress dropped out of the project, and was partly drawn to her after seeing her performance in Marock (2005). He decided on Alaoui for the role of Anna within "five minutes" of meeting her, as he felt she possessed a "luminous" energy that lent itself to her role as a saint-like figure in the film.
In preparation for the shoot, Laugier spent two months undertaking rehearsals with Jampanoï and Alaoui.
Filming