Horror fans can be categorized in two groups. The first group is the usual "That was great, man! Like, did you see how his head explodes, man! Like, cool, man!" type of teenagers, who try to outdo each other by proudly boasting about having seen the goriest scariest whatever movie. You can safely ignore them.
The second group takes horror movies as serious entertainment, and don't praise (or bash) a movie about how gory, scary or disturbing it was. I consider myself one of them.
Martyrs is a perfect example of the kind of movie praised by both groups: for the wrong reasons by the first group, of course. It's a really disturbing movie, with scary imagery, but it's also a serious movie with nice structuring, not resorting to silly jump scares, and keeps its story and characters above the special effects.
The movie opens with a little girl running for her life from her captors. We learn that she was tortured for years, and the people who did it are never caught. Flash forward to 15 years later, she breaks into a house and murders who appear to be a very domestic family of four.
The obvious question for the first half of the movie is, were these really the people who tortured her for years? Or did she make a terrible mistake?
Even if you're watching a dubbed version, anyone with half an eye can easily notice that this isn't a Hollywood movie: it doesn't hammer you with explanation after explanation with endless dialogue and monologue, there's lots of blood and gore but it's in the background: you don't get close-ups or defining shots of "look how we did it!" special effects.
The real horror element in a Hollywood movie would be the shootings, the tortures, gore and guts. In this film, they pale behind the truly horrific thing: how casual the torturers are, how they reason and justify what they do, and go on with their daily lives.
It's a well-made, nicely produced film. I'd say not for the squeamish, but like I said, the psychological horror really is the driving force here. As a horror lover and a movie lover in general I recommend it, as long as you know what you're in for.
The second group takes horror movies as serious entertainment, and don't praise (or bash) a movie about how gory, scary or disturbing it was. I consider myself one of them.
Martyrs is a perfect example of the kind of movie praised by both groups: for the wrong reasons by the first group, of course. It's a really disturbing movie, with scary imagery, but it's also a serious movie with nice structuring, not resorting to silly jump scares, and keeps its story and characters above the special effects.
The movie opens with a little girl running for her life from her captors. We learn that she was tortured for years, and the people who did it are never caught. Flash forward to 15 years later, she breaks into a house and murders who appear to be a very domestic family of four.
The obvious question for the first half of the movie is, were these really the people who tortured her for years? Or did she make a terrible mistake?
Even if you're watching a dubbed version, anyone with half an eye can easily notice that this isn't a Hollywood movie: it doesn't hammer you with explanation after explanation with endless dialogue and monologue, there's lots of blood and gore but it's in the background: you don't get close-ups or defining shots of "look how we did it!" special effects.
The real horror element in a Hollywood movie would be the shootings, the tortures, gore and guts. In this film, they pale behind the truly horrific thing: how casual the torturers are, how they reason and justify what they do, and go on with their daily lives.
It's a well-made, nicely produced film. I'd say not for the squeamish, but like I said, the psychological horror really is the driving force here. As a horror lover and a movie lover in general I recommend it, as long as you know what you're in for.