Additionally, they've cast Young American Television Starlets Bailey Noble and Troian Bellisario to scream, bleed, get chained up, fire a shotgun, endure near-flayings, and so on. The movie opens with young Lucy escaping a torture chamber in what looks like a disused industrial loft, which the cops then examine in the dead of night with no lights on, as cops will. She's placed in an orphanage, befriending Anna, who wants to believe Lucy's story of a monster pursuing her. Cut to years later; a sun-drenched house in a quiet suburb, where a burly dad is doing some excavating, and mom is sending off feuding teenage siblings. Into this pleasant valley scene (in which a close-up of a chef's knife slicing a tomato is meant to serve as a pre-echo of the gore to come, very clever) saunters now-grown-up Lucy (Bellisario), who dispatches the whole brood with a shotgun. She claims to upset Anna (Noble) that these were her torturers. Anna's subsequent discovery that certain wounds of Lucy are self-inflicted leads her to a sense of doubt.
[9] Reception [ edit] Martyrs was panned by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 9% rating based on 33 reviews with an average of 3. 53/10 with the consensus stating, " Martyrs flays off everything that gave the original its icy horrific beauty, leaving us with an empty, pointless remake". [10] On Metacritic it has a score of 19 out of 100 based on 13 reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike". [11] Kalyn Corrigan wrote that "aside from creating a much tamer version, the 2015 Martyrs headed by the Goetz brothers feels too similar to the first film, bordering on a shot-for-shot remake that doesn't really bring anything new or worthwhile to the table in order to justify its existence". [12] See also [ edit] List of films featuring home invasions References [ edit] External links [ edit] Martyrs on IMDb
Both the French and U. iterations of "Martyrs" are transparently voyeuristic cheaply ginned-up Guignol peep shows with intellectual pretensions. Of course, if that's what you're into, dig in!
After the woman dies, the priest overseeing her ordeal looks in Eleanor's direction and shakes his head. Lucie is taken for surgery and Eleanor orders the doctor to perform a procedure on Lucie. The doctor cuts and peels a piece of flesh from Lucie's back as part of the final preparations for her martyrdom. Meanwhile, Anna is taken to a pit outside and buried alive for being Lucie's accomplice but she digs her way into a drainage ditch and escapes. She fights her way back into the underground facility, killing several cabal members. She frees Sam and tells her to run for help. While she searches for Lucie, she is attacked by Fenton and shot in the shoulder but eventually kills him with the help of another captive woman. Anna gets stabbed in the side by one of the cabals before shooting him. Anna finds and interrupts an assembly gathered to watch Lucie die on a cross. Lucie gets a look in her eyes that the group feels signifies martyrdom and Anna, wielding Fenton's gun, insists that Lucie be freed.
The film stars Troian Bellisario, Bailey Noble and Kate Burton. It is a remake of Pascal Laugier 's 2008 film of the same name. The film had its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival on October 9, 2015. It was released on January 22, 2016, by Anchor Bay Films. Plot [ edit] As a child, Lucie escapes from a building where she has been held captive and tortured. Lucie spends the rest of her childhood at St. Mary's Orphanage, where she is haunted by hallucinations of a strange-looking creature that attempts to attack her at every turn. Over time, she grows extremely close to Anna, a fellow resident at the orphanage and Lucie's only friend. Ten years later, Lucie goes to the countryside home of the Patterson family with a shotgun and executes all four family members, believing them to be related to her childhood torture. Lucie calls Anna who is concerned that the family may not be responsible for Lucie's torture. Anna is horrified by the scene when she arrives at the house and calls 911 while Lucie sleeps but hangs up.
Pascal Laugier Pascal Laugier Born 16 October 1971 (age 49) Occupation Film director, screenwriter Years active 1993 – present Pascal Laugier ( French: [loʒje]; born 16 October 1971) [1] is a French screenwriter and film director. [2] Contents 1 Career 2 Filmography 3 References 4 External links Career [ edit] Laugier is a former assistant to director Christophe Gans, having directed the " making-of " documentary about Gans' 2001 film, Brotherhood of the Wolf (Laugier also starred in the film). [3] [4] He has written and directed the fantasy-horror feature films Saint Ange, [5] Martyrs, [6] [7] and The Tall Man. [8] [9] Laugier has been associated with the New French Extremity movement. [10] Laugier was set to direct the remake of Hellraiser [11] [12] but was later taken off the project due to creative differences with the producers; [13] [14] Laugier wanted his film to be very serious and explore gay S&M culture, whereas the producers wanted the film to be more commercial and appeal to a teen audience.
[4] Specifically he worried about "plateauing", saying that "if you're a filmmaker who makes two movies in the same budget bracket, that becomes your thing. You are the guy for the $3 million movie, and then that's all you do", [4] further elaborating that his agent advised him against making the film for this reason. [4] Screenwriter Mark L. Smith had stated that he tried to avoid showing as much of the violence on screen as possible which he stated resulted in "less about watching someone be tortured and more about trying to save a friend. " he has stated that he chose this route because " it's more just my taste. " [5] Early on Kristen Stewart was considered for a role, [3] though her presence in the film was later denied by Stamm. [6] [7] Release [ edit] Anchor Bay Entertainment acquired all North American rights for Martyrs from Wild Bunch after the film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. [8] The film was later screened at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in Los Angeles in October 2015.
And yet, like many of the best—or at least most notorious—modern horror films, Martyrs is unmistakably stained by the era in which it was made. In interviews, Laugier has said the film arose from his sad intuition that "our occidental urban societies are filled with despair and brutality, " a feeling that "we're living a world close to its own end. " To a degree, his film could be fairly slagged as one that indulges in stylish, art-horror nihilism for its own sake, particularly in its direct and exploitative evocation of real 20th-century genocide. But his is also a movie about torture, revenge, and the seemingly boundless capacity for human cruelty, and in that sense, it's unquestionably relevant and a legitimate comment on the world as it is right now. Martyrs has naturally provoked a sharply polarized response, but my own response is more troubled and complicated—mostly positive and admiring of Laugier's audacious and singular vision, but unsettled by some of the dubious places he chooses to go.