Martyrs Remake – Completely Unnecessary

Length: 86 minutes

Release Date: January 22, 2016

Rating: NR

Director: Kevin and Michael Goetz

Martyrs opens with Lucie, a young girl who escapes from an unnamed person and runs for help. The police follow her directions back to a warehouse but find no evidence of anyone there. Lucie then goes to a Catholic orphanage and eventually becomes friends with Anna. Anna is the one she turns to after having a series of nightmares about what she saw during her ordeal. The police later bring in Anna and reveal that they believe Lucie made up the whole thing.

Years later, Lucie is a young woman with a mission. She knocks on the door of a seemingly normal house and blows away the man who answers with a shotgun. Lucie then shoots his wife, asks his son if he knows what they did to him, and kills him too before chasing the man's teenage daughter upstairs and killing her too. Once done, she calls Anna, tells her that she found them, and confesses what she did.

Anna quickly rushes to the house. Though Lucie told her that she found the people who did something bad to her, she thought they would go the police together. What she finds instead are a series of dead bodies that Lucie asks her to help get rid of to make “her” finally stop. Anna discovers that the wife is still alive and tries to help her escape, but Lucie catches them and brutally murders the woman. 

Though Anna doesn't necessarily believe the whole story, she's forced to change her mind after uncovering a hidden series of rooms behind a locked door in the basement. Not only does she find a series of locked rooms, but she also finds a young woman with a similar story to Lucie. Though she promises to help the little girl escape, things change when Eleanor arrives with a group of men who drag the girls back inside. After revealing that Lucie was their martyr years ago, she tells Anna that they want to find someone who will tell them what life is like on the other side. As they begin experimenting on both women, Anna discovers that her friend was telling the truth all along.

When I saw the original Martyrs, I spent most of the movie trying not to look at the screen and squirming because it was so disgusting and disturbing. When we sat down to watch the remake, I warned the boyfriend of that film. Needless to say, neither of us found many scenes in the Martyrs remake very disturbing.

It literally felt like someone tool the original script, decided to dumb it down, took out everything that made that film so unsettling, and then made a remake. That scene where the doctor skins her alive? Yup, it's now a small section of her back removed. Oh, and remember how Lucie kills herself in the original because she can't take her life anymore? Now she survives to the very end with Anna, and the only weird thing that happens to Anna is that they give her electroshock.

This movie was an insult to the original and a movie that didn't need made. It was so different and completely unlike the original that I actually expected to see the cops swoop in, shoot everyone, and save the day in the last scene. Do yourself a favor, skip this one and watch the original.