In 2008, the French film Martyrs, directed by Pascal Laugier, was released in cinemas. The film begins with the story of Lucie, a woman tortured as a child. Years after having managed to escape from captivity, the young woman decides to take revenge. However, the arrival of her friend Anna at the scene of the massacre leads to a terrible discovery and a sadistic, gruesome and bloody torture.
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The film went through different film festivals such as Cannes and Sitges and caused exits before the end, fainting and even vomiting among the public. Critics praised its originality and also predicted that it would divide audiences and leave no one indifferent. After passing the famous French competition, The Weinstein Company acquired the distribution rights in North America. However, producer Bob Weinstein was so disgusted with the film that he decided not to release it. Hollywood, on the other hand, had another idea to reproduce the story created by Laugier.
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A remake too different
After some problems with the director and the budget allocated to the project, in 2015 the remake of the film was released by producers Blumhouse and The Safran Company. Entitled Martyrsbrothers Kevin and Michael Goetz went behind the cameras and Troian Bellisario (Pretty Little Liars) et Bailey Noble (True Blood) starred in the film.
Unlike the original film, which nearly hit French theaters with an 18+ age bracket (which its director said would have killed the film). He eventually earned a 16+ classification. Martyrs (2015) obtained an age recommendation for people 13 and older in the United States. But of course, that made the remake very different from the original project. The rawness of Laugier’s film has been reduced and the ending is more optimistic. With all of this, the result was a monumental failure. On Rotten Tomatoes, for example, it scores 9% from critics and 14% from audiences.
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Even the director of the original film hates
Laugier didn’t mince words when asked about the 2018 Sitges Film Festival, where he was presenting his new film Ghostlandhis opinion on the remake: “I tried to watch it, but didn’t make it past the first 20 minutes. It was like watching my mom get raped“.
The filmmaker also acknowledged that Martyrs was a movie”hated” in France and that he had even been accused of being a “fascistfor producing it. In other territories, however, it is considered one of the best horror films of all time.
This article was written in collaboration with our colleagues from Sensacine.
