Pascal Laugier Unleashes French Horror Masterpiece: Martyrs

Posted by dominie in Films, News on August 20th, 2008

First to put things in perspective, artists in France are very protected so that it allows for a more personal vision, especially in filmmaking, but France however, has never been a country particularly fond of the horror genre. The majority of French financers have always been against producing horror movies, leaving that arena for American filmmakers to gad in. So when the opportunity came through for writer-director Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs to be financed, he did not hesitate to truly explore the darkness that surrounds us.

The film is set in France in the early 1970’s when a girl, abducted over a year ago, resurfaces. The police discover that she had been confined in an old slaughterhouse, but she displays no signs of sexual abuse—there has to be a reason for her abduction and how could she have escaped?

Martyrs is filled with suspense, blood, and gore, but for Pascal Laugier, Martyrs has been more a metaphorical way of reacting to the world’s state of affairs. Horror quickly became a passion for Laugier when he saw it as a tool and an outlet for communication about his pessimistic view of urban societies. His inspiration for the concept came from listening to himself he tells B-D in an interview.

“I was not very well at the time… for personal reasons I felt really lonely… I hated my state and I hated everything that came from society… I couldn’t stand turning on the television anymore, I felt assaulted by everything coming from the mass media and the public opinion. I saw lies and manipulation in more or less everything they were saying and showing to the audience… I see our time as a very violent one. Everything seems to be under the control of personal interest and money. Human relationships are more and more driven by the market—its unbearable. So horror is the perfect way for me to express these things… Martyrs is as desperate, as nihilistic and as dark as my energy when I wrote it. I realized recently that, in a way, my film is not far away from saying: ‘The occidental world we live in is falling apart… very close to its own end…’”

With only a glimpse into Laugier’s thoughts, the plot seems to already have more than enough elements to engineer a haunting picture. The US release of Martyrs has been postponed, but several reviews of the film have already surfaced. The film is definitely rising to the hype and is quickly establishing itself as more than another horror film, but a legend.

Laugier knows his film will not please everyone but is proud to say he put all his effort and honesty into making the film. “I had no executive on my back trying to make me change things, trying to make a more ‘acceptable’ film. Martyrs, as you [will see] it, is exactly my cut.”