If you ever wanted to show your mom MARTYRS, this is your chance.
Since the remake was announced, horror fans begin scratching their heads and wondering just how you can remake the 2008 French film MARTYRS for an American audience. French horror has made a name for itself in recent years by creating some seriously disturbing and intense films that are difficult to top. Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS is among the craziest. It is an incredibly brutal film that pulls no punches and really rakes its audience over the coals. Reactions to it are highly divided - it takes a sharp left turn in the second act that tends to lose a chunk of the audience in the process, but its bold and daring choices are part of the reason it is so affecting.
The remake is directed by Kevin and Michael Goetz from a script by Michael L. Smith. The story is more or less the same. It opens on a young girl, Lucy, bloody and beaten, escaping the confines of what looks to be an abandoned warehouse. She finds help, but when the police go to the location of her imprisonment, they are unable to find any evidence of her captors. She is taken to an orphanage, where she befriends Anna. Though now safe, Lucy is plagued by memories of the violence imparted by her captors. The two grow up together, providing support, friendship, and really the only light in an otherwise dark existence.
Ten years later, Lucy (Troian Bellisario) is still haunted by her past. She suffers from so much post traumatic stress surrounding the events that she is plagued by hallucinations of monsters, imploring her to find the people responsible and to kill them. Thinking she has finally tracked them down, she breaks into the home of a rural, well to do family and attacks them with a shotgun. She is convinced that these are the people who held her captive and tortured her when she was a little girl. She calls Anna (Bailey Noble) for assistance, and though Anna believes Lucy's stories of her childhood, she finds it difficult to believe that these were the people responsible.
It's at this point, that the batshit insanity really comes out. If you haven't seen the film, I won't spoil it for you, and if you have, you know that this is really where the story begins to hold some serious weight. And is the most challenging part to translate to a mainstream American audience. So how does this version compare?
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, it is at this point that MARTYRS becomes the most neutered in the adaptation. What was once an incredibly violent and intense story, taking the audience to and past the limits of their comfort zones, is now watered down to the point that you can almost see more stomach-churning sights on television.
The story itself might much the same as the original film. What it lacks is the violence and presance. And here, the violence and intensity are what push MARTYRS to be what it is. In some cases, you can tone down the violent chunks, change the tone and still come away with an equally good film. In the case of MARTYRS, it wasn't the story that made the impact on the audiences, but the way it is enhanced by the violence. The brutality of the film makes the story so affecting. It brings the audience into the characters' despair and sense of hopelessness, which is key to appreciating the final act.
The one thing that this version did try to do was build up the relationship between Lucy and Anna. Though important the first time around, here it seems to serve more as the center of the story and the bond between the characters is fleshed out a bit more. Truth be told, given their very limited budget, the Goetz brothers did well with what they had. Focusing on the friendship gave the story more emotional appeal, but unfortunately, the lack of brutality and the direction taken by Smith's script strip away everything that makes the it connect with the audience (as harsh as that connection may be). Ultimately, we are left with a film that is a pale shadow of its predecessor.
But again - the mellowed out version might mean your mom might like it, so there's that.
