Martyrs

AroView: You, the viewer, may feel martyred after enduring this unremittingly bleak French horror focused on a pair of unhinged women who seek revenge on the sadists who kidnapped and tortured one of them as a child.

Dir. Pascal Laugier puts his audience through as much pain as his cast, making the second half in particular an uncomfortable watch, though his streak of sadistic glee is restrained to a point where proceedings are (almost) palatable, and arguably excusable. Taking proceedings to a necessary extreme ultimately provides some kind of catharsis - even if the revelatory ending doesn’t hold up to justify the means (or the ‘message’), it at least comes as a welcome relief. Proceed with caution…