Martyrs (2008): A Master Class in Building
In the world of horror, we tend to hear the word “torture” and our minds immediately go to so-called “torture porn” movies in the vein of the Hostel and Saw franchises. And with those movies, we expect certain things. We expect to see unlucky people being quickly thrown into awful situations, being exposed to extreme and gratuitous violence, with often not much more to it other than the gruesome spectacle of it all. We know what’s coming and we long for the visceral brutality of it all. And not to undermine those movies, they have their place after all, but I find there is often a great deal of simplicity to them. The violence is the attraction, so there isn’t often much time dedicated to build up. There is often no growing dread, or much work done at all to elevate the torture beyond its basic, bloody appeal. And I think that’s where Martyrs stands out.
Lucie confronts her former captors
(Spoilers ahead for Martyrs)
Martyrs is a film that I believe is a master class in both surprise and the building of dread. Over the course of its 1 hour and 43-minute run, it keeps its audience completely unaware of what’s coming next, whilst also perfectly building toward it. It takes horrific torture, and rather than expose us to it immediately, it uses its runtime to build toward it. And it does this by gradually showing us the effects of the torture, rather than the torture itself. It first does this with the character Lucie. In her youth, Lucie was subjected to this torture, but escaped. And yet, while she was spared the full brutality of it, we still see how it has scarred her. Upon being rescued, she appears reclusive. She also experiences vivid hallucinations and unknowingly practices self-harm. Ultimately, her trauma even leads her to enact bloody revenge on both guilty adults and innocent children. This is our first hint at how terrifying and brutal this torture is. Even though Lucie got away, the sliver she did experience still had this serious of an effect. She is our first taste of what becomes of those who experience this torture, but it is just the appetizer. Her trauma is only a fraction of what it could have been had she never escaped. Our next taste follows soon with introducing The Creature.
The Creature attacks Lucie in the bathroom
The Creature is a violent, twisted and animalistic entity that plagues Lucie. She is a hallucination, one that resembles the woman Lucie left behind when she escaped her captors. She is Lucie’s idea of what could become of someone who was forced to endure the full course of torment that she avoided. She is the next step up in our exposure to the horrors of this torture. However, just as with Lucie, The Creature is not the true result. She is horrifying, but she is still just a figment of Lucie’s imagination. There is still more to come. We are still being kept in the dark. We have yet to see an authentic example of what this torture results in. And this eventually comes after both Lucie and The Creature leave the narrative, and it comes in the form of The Tortured.
The Tortured is freed from her cell and brought to the main house
The Tortured mixes the visceral body horror of The Creature and the psychological damage we saw in Lucie. She crawls out from the darkness and we see this wreck of a human. She can hardly form sentences and her body is scarred and mangled. Her head and crotch are encased in metal, with rods drilled into her flesh to keep the apparatus in place. As well as this, she also experiences vivid hallucinations that lead her to self-harm, much like Lucie did. We have reached the end of the road. We finally see what this torture can really do, and it is horrifying, disgusting, and sad. It’s something no person should have to endure, and we know this, without ever even having seen it happen. Martyrs’ first half doesn’t show us limbs being torn off. It shows us the bloody stump and makes us fear the violence that caused it.
Anna is taken and chained up in the torture chamber
All the while this has been happening, while they have built this torture up in our minds, we have been growing to love our protagonist, Anna. We’ve seen her caring nature, and we have become close to her, and we never expect that she could meet the same fate as the tortured women we’ve seen. As far as we know, at this point in the narrative, the people who did this are dead, and there is no one around for miles. We think she’s safe, and the way the narrative never shows its hand, the way it keeps us completely in the dark about what is to come next, allows us to feel this way. But then the house is swarmed by armed men, and she is taken captive. It is this moment that stands out for me. It is a culmination of everything we have seen in the first half of the film. We have watched as the horrors of this mostly unseen torture destroyed the lives of multiple women, and then suddenly the camera turns and faces our kind and loving Anna. We have seen what this torture does and now we are going to see it in action. And it is going to happen to our hero. This is the moment where the movie shifts. It’s where its components finally fit together, and we are dragged down to hell kicking and screaming to witness this torture first hand. It’s a masterfully crafted moment and I believe it is one of the key elements that sets Martyrs apart from other torture films.
