{"id":13196,"date":"2016-02-23T15:12:26","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T20:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13196"},"modified":"2016-02-23T15:13:39","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T20:13:39","slug":"br-martyrs-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13196","title":{"rendered":"BR: Martyrs (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Martyrs2015\"Film<\/strong>: Weak<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Standard<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Anchor Bay<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0A<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0February 2, 2016<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Horror<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Two women are held by a death cult and forced to undergo horrific torture, becoming martyrs in their goal\u00a0to know what lies at death’s threshold.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Making-of Featurette: “Martyrs – A First Look” (8:21).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Warning: this review contains blatant SPLOIERS!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One could argue any attempt remake a film hailed by fans as the apex of New French Extremity<\/a> film is an exercise in futility and \/ or commercial folly, but then there\u2019s the other question: If you\u2019ve never seen the grisly original, will the refocused American remake still work as a potent shocker?<\/p>\n

Taking a notorious or cult foreign film and building on its capital by rendering a English language version for domestic audiences isn\u2019t new \u2013 David Fincher did a shorter redo of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<\/strong> (2009) 2 years after the Norwegian film\u2019s release; George Sluizer handled the American version<\/a> of The Vanishing<\/strong> (1988) 5 years after directing the original; and Ole Bornedal remade his Nightwatchman<\/strong> (1994) in English 3 years later \u2013 but there\u2019s a fair argument to be made that by knocking down on the nastiness of an original, what\u2019s left may be either something too neat, or too diluted for anyone to enjoy.<\/p>\n

Plans to remake Pascal Laugier\u2019s same-titled 2008 film reportedly go back to that same year \u2013 no surprise, as producers want to build on a film\u2019s valuable pre-existing reputation among connoisseurs and the curious \u2013 but Mark L. Smith\u2019s script didn\u2019t come to fruition with its original director, Daniel Stamm (The Exorcism of Emily Rose<\/strong>). Jump forward to 2015 when the realized film debuted, as directed by brothers Kevin and Michael Goetz.<\/p>\n

The American remake follows most of Laugier\u2019s original story, but as the Goetz brothers detail in the short and very generic making-of featurette on Anchor Bay\u2019s Blu-ray, they chose to emphasize the unwavering friendship between the two female leads rather than gory torture, and cap the film with some hope. Martyrs<\/strong> may be as divisive among horror fans as A Serbian Film<\/strong> (2010) \u2013 both contain nihilistic storylines and visual details and sequences that go far beyond the realms of R-rated Hollywood product \u2013 but in spite of the obvious care in trying to make a film that offers a bit of everything, the American Martyrs<\/strong> ultimately feels diluted, needing Laugier\u2019s extreme touch.<\/p>\n

The core story has Lucie (Troian Bellisario) being freed from a warehouse where she\u2019d been tortured by someone, and a month later developing a tight friendship with fellow orphanage \u2018inmate\u2019 Anna (Bailey Noble). Jump 10 years ahead, and Lucy arrives at the door of a beautiful country yuppie house seated beside a wide field and looming orchard, and blows away a father, mother, son, and daughter with a shotgun before calling Anna to inform her she\u2019s found her tormentors.<\/p>\n

The pair\u2019s agreement was to call the police, but Lucie wanted immediate payback, and the pair attempt a quick cleanup of the murder scene not out of fearing an arrest, but to quell the demonic apparition that\u2019s been haunting Lucie for a decade \u2013 a fellow inmate who may or may not be a ghost or a figment of Lucie\u2019s serious PTSD.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s around this juncture where things get wobbly: a character (Sarah) that died in the original lives, whereas in the Goetz version Anna\u2019s discovery of the basement torture chamber and its cells are populated with a woman and<\/em> a young girl similar in age to Lucie when she was freed by police.<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s script focuses on the shared torment between Anna and Lucie as the former is taxed with the guilt in making a phone call that alerts the villains of their presence at the house, and starts the whole martyr-torture denouement, whereas Laugier gets rid of unnecessary characters, and makes Anna the heroine, experiencing everything which drove Lucie to see a murderous ghost.<\/p>\n

Laugier\u2019s villainous cult abduct young women instead of girls (the leaders found young women \u2018more progressive\u2019 than any other age or gender group), but as in Smith\u2019s adaptation, they use extreme torture to find what lies just at the moment of death as victims \u2018witness\u2019 the unseen, just as they crossover to the world of the dead.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a ridiculous premise that makes Martyrs<\/strong> part of a peculiar sub-genre in which a woman who undergoes horrific torment achieves an almost holy level of dignity through suffering, thereby bettering her monstrous aggressors. Torment unfurls in blasts of increased severity before the heroine redeems herself by surviving with a significant measure of dignity or rebelliousness intact, or in Laugier\u2019s film, the woman witnesses the rare, the spiritual, and the indescribable, making her suffering almost<\/em> valid to connoisseurs of this sub-genre, and be rewarded for their devotion with a closing that combines profane imagery that\u2019s intricately or horrifically beautiful, and music which beatifies the heroine.<\/p>\n

Brand it as Jeanne d\u2019Arc Syndrome, where the suffering is necessary for the heroine to achieve a meaningful life by exceeding the expectations of the worst cruelties meted out by humanity, and for Medieval spectators, admire her willpower and refusal to buckle and disintegrate. The crowd (Medieval, and perhaps contemporary) that observes the heroine\u2019s suffering is rewarded with both spectacle and a personal sacrifice that transcends insurmountable hardships, giving average citizens strength and devotion in their own banal lives. While some spectators may enjoy the gore, feel joy in observing the punishing of a guilty figure, or are titillated by the erotic imagery of a female figure bending, bleeding, or burning in plain sight, another contingent may admire the heroine\u2019s courage as she experiences stages of her own slow demise.<\/p>\n

Switching the genders of \u2018martyrs\u2019 to male in a filmic equivalent (and perhaps even in Medieval times) would lessen the audience\u2019s reward because this sub-genre mandates the layered\u00a0 removal of a heroine\u2019s outer and inner beauty.<\/p>\n

In Laugier\u2019s film, bodies are cut, scarred, beaten, shaved, sliced, and ultimately flayed alive, with the latter torment creating a surreal work of living art. As certain spectators may appreciate the beauty of a performance artist suspended from hooks as skin is transformed into living fabric, and the artist\u2019s suffering is verbally muted, and thereby dignified, Laugier achieves the same impact by having the skinned heroine transformed into a living rendition of a Gray\u2019s Anatomy<\/a> etching that highlights the beauty of sub-epidermal muscles, veins, and glistening fat.<\/p>\n

While Laugier fixated on physical beatings before the horrific skin-peeling finale, bludgeoning audiences with sounds and images as unmerciful as the tormentors, the Goetz brothers steer away from most of the nastiness: the beatings are described<\/em> by Lucy instead of experienced in detail by herself or Anna; and while the skin-peeling remains an integral part of the show, it\u2019s no longer full-body.<\/p>\n

Being an American production with a desire to remain within the R-rated realm, Lucie (and all characters) remains clothed, which kind of renders Lucie\u2019s flaying sequence as (oddly) gratuitous because there\u2019s no visual payoff, as in Laugier\u2019s version, which builds towards that money shot evoking performance art.<\/p>\n

Sarah, the helmeted woman found by Anna in the original (who dies) lives for a while in the remake (and lacks scars and helmet); she\u2019s ultimately forced to be immolated Joan of Arc-style in a poorly rendered digital sequence that narratively allows the cult\u2019s leader (Kate Burton) to explain their goals to Anna as the woman\u2019s about to be incinerated\u2026 but the woman\u2019s torment makes no sense<\/em>: if the goal is to commit heinous pain up until the point of death and allow a cult official to<\/em> hear<\/em> the victim\u2019s perception of what they\u2019re approaching before they crossover and finally die, burning someone ensures she won\u2019t be able to speak<\/em> to anyone and offer proof, let alone a raison d\u2019etre for the entire cult modus operandi.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, if in the Goetz version Anna is \u2018unworthy\u2019 of being escalated to a higher phase of pain like Lucie, and is sentenced to an ignominious death by being buried alive in a large open pit with the dead family, why isn\u2019t she restrained to ensure she doesn\u2019t hide in the large drainpipe we see early in the film which looks suspicious, and to more savvy audiences, signals \u2018This will play some role near the end of the film!\u2019 Escape she does, and return Anna does, with the shotgun we see her sliding under the sofa early in the film, which also signals to audiences \u2018This will ALSO become important an hour from now!\u2019<\/p>\n

Similar to the original film, a large chunk of screen time is devoted to the pair at the house, cleaning up, arguing, chasing a ghost, and getting rid of the family cadavers, which slows down the drama\u2019s otherwise gradual momentum. Lucie does attempt suicide by tumbling over a banister, but she survives; in the original, she cuts her throat and dies, leaving Anna to take her place as the cult\u2019s novitiate martyr once the cult arrives. While Smith\u2019s scripted finale does ensure the two friends are martyrs together, the happy ending feels too neat.<\/p>\n

The Goetz brothers do retain one aspect of Laugier\u2019s finale that always felt like a cop-out: the spastic coup de grace. Instead of the cult\u2019s female leader killing herself because the words whispered by Anna are too horrific to bear, in the remake it\u2019s the priest who blows out his brains, leaving the cult\u2019s leader more than a little \u2018bereft.\u2019 However, because it\u2019s the priest who kills himself, the leader and chief orchestrator of the cult\u2019s insane mayhem is denied knowledge, and closure \u2013 perhaps the cruelest fate and punishment for such a monster.<\/p>\n

Anchor Bay\u2019s Blu-ray sports a gorgeous transfer of the film, and there\u2019s no doubt its makers wanted to deliver a version that emphasized different, more humane character traits to counterbalance the story\u2019s otherwise nihilistic elements, but there isn\u2019t much material to really fill out a feature film. The opening orphanage material is fine \u2013 it\u2019s the flipside of Irreversible<\/strong> (2002), in which images of peace and beauty that surround the girls’ burgeoning friendship are gradually followed by horror and brutality \u2013 and one can argue the frequent interpolation of placid exterior shots of the gleaming, rustic\u00a0yuppie house \u2018opens up\u2019 the story, but the frequency of the exterior shots (not to mention the young girl\u2019s escape and flight to a neighbour at the end) ultimately feels like narrative padding.<\/p>\n

The directors and writer Smith tried to interpret Laugier\u2019s film from a slightly different vantage, but like Sluizer and Bornedal\u2019s own efforts to dilute the potency of their own original works for American audiences, the end results suit no one because the elements which made the aforementioned originals so potent, in terms of scenes, character conflicts, specific plot points, and more often than not, superb casting performances, were significantly altered and sacrificed for weaker substitutes.<\/p>\n

Martyrs<\/strong> 2015 joins its flawed brethren not as another failed remake, but as a case study on why in special circumstances, sometimes the best way to tackle the remake of an original is not to tackle it at all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>\u00a0 — Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One could argue any attempt remake a film hailed by fans as the apex of New French Extremity film is an exercise in futility and \/ or commercial folly, but then there\u2019s the other question: If you\u2019ve never seen the grisly original, will the refocused American remake still work as a potent shocker?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[4280,4281,4277,4276,4273,4278,4274,4279,4275],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3qQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13206,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13196\/revisions\/13206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}