Tag: torture

SHOCKtober 2012 – Day 31: Martyrs (2008)

Random Thoughts, Reviews

Martyrs.

Fuck you.

That really should be the entirety of my review. But I don’t want to be so glib. It might encourage people to see this horrific piece of crap.

Basically, you should only watch this if you like love ultra-graphic gore and sadistic torture. If you don’t like love those things, then you should avoid this movie at all costs.

So, this girl, Lucie, escapes from somewhere that she was clearly being kept and tortured. She gets away and gets put in an orphanage where she befriends Anna. Anna learns that Lucie claims to be tormented by a ghoulish monster. Flash forward fifteen years where Lucie busts in on a family eating breakfast and murders them all with a double barrel shotgun. She calls Anna, tells her she killed the people who tortured her as a child and Anna comes to help dispose of the bodies. Lucie keeps being attacked by the ghoul, but, once Anna is there, realizes it is all in her head, is just guilt over the girl she left behind when she escaped, and slits her own throat. All of this is shown in very graphic detail.

Anyway, Anna discovers a secret basement and a tortured girl, who looks a lot like the ghoul Lucie was fighting. Anna frees her and tries to help her.

It was at this point that I first turned the movie off and uttered the phrase, “Fuck you.” The tortured girl, when left alone for a few moments, is found cutting herself with a giant knife, just hacking away at her own wrist. Eventually, when I calmed down, I watched the rest of the movie.

People show up, kill the tortured girl and take Anna prisoner. The people explain that they are torturing girls to learn the secrets of the afterlife. Anna gets tortured. A lot. Time passes, the movie keeps fading in and out and she reappears each time more tortured. Eventually she’s told that she’s almost complete. Then they flay her alive. Flay. At this point Anna reaches some sort of enlightenment and experiences the afterlife. Not a near death experience – she’s in this euphoria state for over two hours. Then she tells the leader lady something, it’s whispered – we don’t get to hear it. The crazy cult people gather to hear the words of Anna, and while they wait the old lady tells another member to “keep doubting” and then shoots herself in the head. A nice title card tells us that “martyr” is Greek for “witness”.

All that torture. All that disgusting shit. All of it, and I get “keep doubting”?

Seriously, Martyrs, fuck you.

Be sure to keep an eye on Final Girl and the rest of SHOCKtober.

UPDATE: Check out other participants - Blog @ Rotten Cotton, Life Between Frames

SHOCKtober 2012 – Day 4: Audition (1999)

Random Thoughts, Reviews

A man’s wife dies. Years later, his son says he should get re-married. The man is picky and has a list of desires for the perfect woman. His best friend concocts a plan where they will have a casting call for a movie and use it to find the man a wife.

If this were an American film from the late 1990s it would be a romantic comedy, probably starring Tom Hanks. If it was from the 1980s I’d probably be watching it on Cinemax after my parents had gone to sleep. Instead, this is a Japanese film from Takashi Miike called Audition, and it is most definitely not a rom-com or a skinemax flick.

That being the case, it isn’t surprising that the best friend immediately thinks something is wrong with the girl our hapless protagonist is attracted to. His friend warns him to stay away from her, and he does, for four days, during which time she sits waiting by the phone. He goes out with her a few times, they go away together, she admits to being abused as a child, he says he loves her and they make love. When he wakes, she’s gone.

Now he can’t find her. All the leads on her resume are dead ends and he hears from people about some crazy deaths. And then he finds her again… he’d have been better off if he hadn’t, because what had been a movie that was walking the tightrope of drama and thriller, but here is takes a wild left turn and plunges off the cliff deep into horror.

The things I have seen I cannot unsee.

I have known about this film for years, and I have avoided it. I like monster movies and slasher flicks and various kids of horror and terror, but there is something about these sorts of graphic torture films that unsettle me like nothing else. And more than the violence, more than the blood, what gets to me most is the glee with which she carries out the tasks. Even when the villain of these sorts of films gets it in the end, it never feels satisfying. There is no victory here. No winning.

I’m going to shower three times a day every day for a week. And I’m prescribing myself at least two hours a day of cat pictures on the Internet and daily visits to Cute Overload. These Brillo pads are useless as they are not scraping the images from my mind…

Be sure to keep an eye on Final Girl and the rest of SHOCKtober.

UPDATE: Check out other participants – Life Between Frames, Blog @ Rotten Cotton, Money and a Half, Final Girl, Thrill Me!