Martyrs (2016)

Running Time: 86 minutes

Release Date: January 22, 2016

Review by: Stacey

 

Yes, they have remade Martyrs.  I feel like I have to start off saying that because apparently a lot of people didn't know that this was even a thing.  From the time that news broke that the Goetz Brothers (Scenic Route) had already filmed the movie- shocking (and pissing off) everyone- it didn't stand a chance in the horror community.  The French 2008 original, which is usually lumped into the category of "French extreme horror" (Inside, Haute Tension, Frontier(s)) and one of my absolute favorites, left a pretty big impact on the folks that have watched it.  And for good reason- that shit is brutal, and dark, and haunting, and heartbreaking, and and and... you get the idea.

Oh yeah, we're talking about the remake, right?  Yeah, that version wasn't any of those things.

If you've seen the original, then you already know the basic plot of the remake as well.  For those that don't know, after Lucy (Ever Prishkulnik) escaped from the people who were torturing her, she befriends a young Anna (Elyse Cole) in an orphanage and the two quickly grow a close bond.  10 years later, Lucy (Troian Bellisario) finds the people responsible for her abuse and seeks to exact revenge despite Anna's (Bailey Noble) reluctance.

 

Don't be fooled, this is definitely a not shot-for-shot remake.  Which normally would have been a good thing had they not done a complete 180 in the second half.  I know that the original starts off as a revenge flick that goes horribly wrong, but screenwriter Mark L. Smith turned the Martyrs remake into an actual revenge flick which felt like such a cop out to me.  It's so easy to make a revenge film, which have definitely saturated the horror market the last few years.  I'll just hold the opinion that he went that route because it's hard to top the original which had the perfect balance of story and brutality.

 

 Coming in at 86 minutes, I felt like scenes that shouldn't have been looked at so in depth were, and others were completely rushed and mixed up compared to the original.  I know a lot of people find the violent scenes in the original extremely hard to watch, but it's those scenes that make you feel the hopelessness of the situation and build a sympathy for the characters.  The remake decided to focus very little on the torture (except for when it was a gory scene, of course), and in doing this, made it really hard for me to feel a connection with the characters like the original Lucie and Anna.

 

The acting itself wasn't terrible, but didn't leave any kind of impression on me.  The lead female villain in the remake (Kate Burton, who I only kept seeing as Meredith Grey's mom from Grey's Anatomy) came off so much less frightening as Mademoiselle in the original.  The Lucy and Anna characters felt uninspired, even when another girl was added into the mix.  Everyone felt forgettable and totally disposable.

 

To be fair, I wasn't expecting a lot from the Martyrs remake, so I wasn't terribly disappointed when it disappointed me.  If you've never seen the original, you'll probably come out of this one actually liking it.  If you have seen the original and actually watched the remake, you'll understand why you can't NOT compare the two.  Less grim, less brutal, less impactful... the Martyrs remake is a totally dumbed down version for the American audience that honestly was better off not being made at all.

.5/5 (only because of the balls they had to remake Martyrs)

 

Check out the trailer below