Scariest. Movie. Ever.

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kateln, have you seen "Martyrs"? It drives me crazy because two weeks after watching it, I cannot get it outta my head. Which is crazy-making because it's an awesome, deeply-profound story wrapped in the most brutal, violent scenes of torture I've ever seen. And yet... it really couldn't be told any other way. It's the sort of film I'm really glad to have seen but can never watch again. And I tried.

[kateln]

I have not, if it's the film I've heard about (woman going after the people who abused her as a child?) then I'm a coward in regards to it. I've heard it's a great film, just very intense, and very tough.

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That's the one. It starts out as you describe and twists, twice, into a VERY different movie. Kinda like how "Hostel" starts out as torture porn and turns into a standard action film, only "Martyrs", instead of backpedaling, goes into a higher (intellectual) gear.

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The interesting thing about Martyrs is while the torture is brutal it is actually really basic compared to say Saw or Hostel. What makes it tough to watch isn't that it is outrageously violent but the repetitiveness and clinical detachment. It really shows how a person can be systematically broken down. I know this sounds terrible but I would also recommend it.

bstewart, if you enjoyed Martyrs ( I know enjoyed isn't quite the right word), I would recommend Inside/ À l'intérieur. It is not trying to do something as intellectual as Martyrs, it is just a balls out crazy horror movie. But it is similarly well crafted and Beatrice Dalle is amazingly creepy.

I am currently trying to track down a copy of Them/Ils which was the inspiration for The Strangers.

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I've seen both "Inside" and "Them" and they're good but... kinda disposable. In that an hour after I watched them I was pretty-much unaffected. "Inside" does go places I could never have imagined, though, and does it in an uncompromising way. I think that's what the new wave in French horror achieves which American horror doesn't: it throws down against the jokey, ironic crap that Hollywood's been putting out.

Golly, bronze, I should change my avatar to Cyril and we can munch popcorn and watch movies together; we have eerily similar taste.

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Yeah seriously. Not too many of my friends really like horror movies, especially the foreign or extreme ones. I made my ex who hates horror watch Audition with me without telling him what it was about. Man was he mad at me. In my defense I knew it had a reputation of being scary but I didn't think it was going to be that disturbing.

[kateln]

See my problem with horror movies like Martyrs is that a lot of times to handle them (like the torture scenes in Hostel) I sort of "detach" (Oh, that's not really scary). Then later on I start thinking about them, and then I'm up for days...I'll give Martyrs a try though.

I saw it before it became a huge deal, but The Blair Witch Project was custom made for my siblings and me. My mom--who everyone meets and thinks is the nicest lady ever, and so kind and sweet--LOVES to tell her kids scary stories. Loves them ("There's a blood red moon out tonight, that means there's going to be a murder....hope it's not one of you kids! Goodnight!"). So we all have very vivid imaginations . We all had a lot of ideas about what was going on in the darkness when you heard the one guy screaming from a distance, and even more ideas about what happened to the other two in the basement. Again, I did not sleep well for days.

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Argh, it's hard to talk about "Martyrs" without spoiling. But let's just say that the brutality is so relentless and goes on for so long that I moved past the shock, into the detachment of which you speak, kateln, and into... something else. Which is exactly what happens to the main character. And that's, I'm afraid, all I can say without diminishing the revelation: the audience is intellectually brutalized as the physically brutal acts unspool, and for artistically resonant reasons, as it turns out.

[kateln]

I watched Martyrs.

I would now like to go back to Friday, before I watched Martyrs. Wow, that was...wow. It's going to be a few days before I process it.

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Dec 5, 2011 16:59:47 GMT -4 kateln said:

I watched Martyrs.

I would now like to go back to Friday, before I watched Martyrs. Wow, that was...wow. It's going to be a few days before I process it.

right? While the *idea* of "Martyrs" turns out to be quite simple, processing it is far from simple or easy.