Martyrs (2015)


REVIEWER RATING: 
4/10


A remake of the 2008 French film with the same name, Martyrs had been in development for several years before finally going into production and with good reason considering the bleakness and violence of the source material. Regardless, the studio eventually moved forward and now we have this unnecessary remake, which having seen it I can say is every bit as pointless as you'd expect it to be.

The story pretty much remains the same: a young girl named Lucie somehow escapes her tormentors and goes to the police, who find no people or evidence to corroborate her story of being tortured aside from the scars on her body. She's eventually put into an orphanage, where she quickly befriends a girl named Anna. Fast forward 10 years and the girls are now grown up and out of the orphanage, where Lucie (still haunted by the demons of her past) has only one goal in mind--get back at those who wronged her so long ago.

For the first two acts the movie is basically the same as the original, with only minor tweaks here and there. It's not until a key event occurs in the third act that the story and tone begin to change, where unlike its grim predecessor things are a bit more hopeful and there's much less violence and gore (no surprise) and only a couple short torture scenes, which don't even show a whole lot to begin with. Apparently the filmmakers opted to replace much of the violence in favor of focusing more on the relationship of the girls, which normally is fine, but in this case only managed to lessen the impact that made the original so powerful.

So essentially everything that made the original so intense is non-existent here, as it proves to be nothing more than just another watered-down shitty "re-imagining". On the plus side the pacing is decent, and with the exception of some terrible CG fire, the production values weren't bad considering its fairly low budget.

Martyrs is as you'd expect from an American remake--a toned down version that offers little that we haven't already seen in its predecessor or in general. If you're a fan of the original then skip this, but if you're new to the genre or haven't seen the first then you may like thi... wait no, actually just do yourself a favor and watch the original instead.
OVERALL: 
Martyrs is as you'd expect from an American remake--a toned down version that offers little that we haven't already seen in its predecessor or in general. If you're a fan of the original then skip this, but if you're new to the genre or haven't seen the first then you may like thi... wait no, actually just do yourself a favor and watch the original instead.


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