While I was in
CANNES, the horror flick I kept hearing about from
everybody and their uncle’s mistresses was Pascal Laugier’s
MARTYRS. Martyrs this, the ending is
killer, the film is so extreme and perverse, Martyrs that! Sadly my lowly Press Pass didn’t get me into any of
the market screenings for the film, hence I didn’t get to see it.
With that spat, here’s a little taste of MARTYRS for ya via a
video slide show of stills from the film
(no trailer available yet), some Posters,
the very LONG official synopsis
and a couple of pics. MARTYRS stars MYLÈNE JAMPANOÏ and
MORJANA ALAOUI. You can get more juice on
the flick at
its OFFICIAL
SITE HERE. Is it me or are the French hitting the
bull’s-eye when it comes to genre fare now of late? KEEP EM COMING LES AMIS! If only Holly-remake
would follow in their footsteps…if only…
See a slide show of MARTYRS pics here!
SYNOPSIS: France. A night at the beginning
of the 1970s. Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered
wandering by the side of a country road. Near catatonic, she can say nothing
about what has happened to her. The cops quickly find the place in which
she’s been incarcerated – a disused slaughterhouse. Every indication is that
she never once left the empty, freezing room in which she was imprisoned.
Filthy, starving, dehydrated, the child’s body nonetheless bears no traces
of sexual abuse – this was no pedophile abduction, but something far
stranger.What happened in that icy room? And how did Lucie escape? Lucie is
hospitalized – slowly she learns how to live again, an enfant sauvage
gradually returning to the real world. In the hospital, she meets Anna,
another little girl, and a victim of terrible abuse at the hands of her
family. In no time, they are inseparable. Anna takes charge of Lucie, like a
mother. As for her kidnappers, the police are at a dead end. Lucie’s ordeal
remains a terrible mystery.
One night, as Anna sleeps, Lucie hears an awful,
rasping breathing. A vision appears: a body, naked, skeletal, tortured.
Barely human. The apparition seizes her…15 years later. A house, isolated
in the middle of a forest. A family: Mum, Dad, two kids. A happy home. As
they eat breakfast, there’s a knock at the door. The father opens it to find
a young woman, hollow-eyed and wraithlike and mad. In her hands, a rifle.
“Remember the little girl I once was?” She shoots him where he stands,
enters the house, and locks the door…Minutes later, the family lie bloody.
All dead. Lucie calls Anna, who tells her not to move, she’ll be right
there. In shock, Lucie hangs up. And then she hears it. That terrible,
terribly familiar breathing…