I haven’t seen the original 2008 French film Martyrs, so I can’t say whether this US remake is any more graceful or gruesome. But it’s deeply unappetising – insipid for much of its length, before soullessly revelling in the agony for its final stretch. A young girl escapes from captivity and torture; years later, she tracks down her captors, along with her sceptical best friend, only to get caught up in more grimness. It’s hard to see why anyone would want to spend two years of their life making movies like this: you imagine directors the Goetz brothers saying, “We need to have a meeting with the effects department: that mouth clamp in the final reel doesn’t look nearly painful enough.” I suspect it’s relatively tame as this horror sub-genre goes, but it still makes you feel grubby.
