Martyrs

In the middle of a family meal, an ordinary looking father answers the front door and is shot dead by a traumatized young woman. The apparent survivor of a childhood kidnapping, she is out for revenge! But that’s only the start of things. The girl and her accomplice are stalked around the house by a freakish and disturbing looking creature bent on attacking them. Is it real or just in their heads? Was the family really the kidnappers? This intriguing mystery is eventually abandoned and the film degenerates into seemingly endless scenes of uncompromising brutality and torture. What elevates it above the likes of Hostel is an air of intelligence, and the notion behind it owes something to Clive Barker’s cults of suffering and cruelty. This, however, does not make it any easier to watch. Pascal Laugier is handling the remake of Barker’s Hellraiser and he’s certainly well suited for that. It’s just unfortunate that after such an interesting opening, this settles for cheap thrills and increasingly repulsive sensationalism.