You'll feel ashamed of yourself...

Terror. Graphic terror. I watched a horror movie a few weeks ago so violent I was blown away. It is graphic. It's tense. It's exhausting. I’m shocked that so few people are talking about it. So I’m going to. Maybe it’s because the French get a bad name, I don’t know, except to say this is one freaking movie.

            “Martyrs”

If you haven’t heard of it, go get it right now. Order it from Netflix.

Directed by: Pascal Laugier and was first shown at Cannes Film Festival in 2008

This is the best quality horror movie I’ve seen. The French are on a role, with “Frontiers,” another gritty horror. They have found a niche.

I won’t spoil the movie here but…It starts out with an unsettling series of camera angles. A girl, maybe about 11, beaten up, bruised, bloody face, barely dressed running out of a deserted factory. It looks real.

We learn the girl, Lucie was a prisoner. We see a chair, dark dingy cell. The chair has a hole in it. She was tortured. But here’s where the movie is brilliant. You don’t know why she was tortured. You’re thinking oh yeah, seen it before, torture porn. No, No, No. You will never guess what is going on or why Lucie is being victimized. Until the end. And it’s so deep. So physiologically unsettling, it’s genius.

The movie jumps to fifteen years later. This is the story. Throughout the movie Lucie is tormented by an image. A woman, think it’s a woman. Yup, it’s a woman. Naked, starved, bones protruding, female, very creepy. The image attacks her, cuts her up, carves in, carves out, blood, wet painful, cuts her again, and again and again.

I was confused here. I thought I knew where this movie was going, wrong. It fooled me. A different story emerges. One you don’t expect. One you can’t figure out. The pace is fast. You don’t have time to think about where it’s going. You don’t have time to put the pieces together. It’s happening rapidly in front of your eyes.

Lucie is at a middle class family house. Then something happens. Lucie calls her friend Ann to come help her. Another moment you don’t expect. Then something happens. Again you’re puzzled. Then for the next 30 minutes. You are witness to extreme horror. Only near the end does all this brutality make sense. Clue: Martyr is Greek for “witness.”

All horror movies will be measured against this one!

When you have watched it through to the end. Post you’re thoughts. You will feel ashamed watching this movie. It’s like you’re watching something you know you shouldn’t be watching. Martyrs…