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This article discusses themes of self-harm and graphic violence that may not be suitable for all readers.
In 2022, when Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele shared some of his favorite horror movies, the list was as fascinating and insightful as his own films. It contained some expected and beloved classics, names like The Shining, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Candyman. But among them was one film that stood out, a movie that holds a firm reputation as one of the most difficult and unsettling movies ever made, a film that many viewers famously can’t bring themselves to finish. It was a film that reportedly had audiences walking out in the middle of its premiere because the true horror it presented was not easy to digest.
That film was Pascal Laugier’s infamous 2008 French creation, Martyrs. Its inclusion on a list coming straight from a director known for his social commentary immediately signals that there is more to Martyrs than just its reputation for brutality and graphics. Martyrs is a surprisingly intelligent and artistically ambitious work. Underneath its challenging surface, it’s a psychological horror film that uses its shocking story to ask big, uncomfortable questions about trauma, faith, and the human capacity for suffering, making it a masterpiece of the genre for those brave enough to see it through to its unforgettable end.
Martyrs Is Jordan Peele's Favorite "Messed Up" Film
Martyrs is often seen as a key film in what critics dubbed the «New French Extremity,» a wave of transgressive French cinema from the early 2000s that wasn’t afraid to push boundaries with its content. Films like Irreversible, Sombre, Secret Things, and the latest addition, Titane, were part of this era, which defines unconventionality in cinema with its graphic and gore visuals and taboo-busting approach. Director Pascal Laugier certainly does that in Martyrs, but it’s the ideas behind the film’s brutality that likely caught the attention of a filmmaker like Jordan Peele.
Peele’s own work is celebrated for using the horror genre to look at deep social and psychological ideas. Get Out used horror to talk about racism and the loss of identity; Us explored ideas of class and duality. In a similar way, Martyrs uses its extreme horror premise to look at something deeper: the exploitation of suffering. In fact, for her role in Us, Peele suggested many films to Lupita Nyong’o to watch for her preparation, and Martyrs was one of them.
The secret society at the heart of the film doesn’t see its victims, Lucie and Anna, as people. It sees them as experiments, as vessels to be broken in the pursuit of a philosophical goal. Their pain is treated as a resource, something to be measured and harvested to achieve «enlightenment» for an elite group of people who will never dare to be on the receiving end of this agony. This idea of one group’s suffering being used to benefit another is a powerful and uncomfortable social critique that connects with the kind of layered horror present in Peele’s own work.
The film opens by introducing the audience to a young girl, Lucie, who has just escaped from a derelict slaughterhouse where she was held captive and tortured. She is deeply traumatized and unable to explain what happened to her. In the orphanage where she is taken, she befriends another girl, Anna, who becomes her only source of comfort and trust. But even Anna was not enough to stop the demonic woman who came to haunt her at night, and after which Lucie usually ends up with bleeding cuts in various places on her body.
The film then jumps forward 15 years. Lucie, still haunted, believes she has found her childhood tormentors and, with her devoted friend Anna dragged into the chaos, she walks into a normal suburban home and massacres the entire family, a couple and their son and daughter, with a shotgun. This act of violence kicks off what initially feels like a brutal revenge story, but the film quickly reveals it’s after something much stranger and more philosophical.
The first half of the movie is a powerful look at the lasting effects of trauma, as Lucie is stalked by the demonic woman, who soon shapes into her full form as a grotesque, emaciated creature which was, in fact, a terrifying manifestation of her own guilt for having left another tortured girl behind in captivity all those years ago. This isn’t a simple ghost story; it’s a story about the memory and guilt of becoming a literal monster. And it is shown to the audience in the most honest, rough, brutal and graphic way. In 2022, when Peele was ranking his top horror films for Fear: The Home of Horror, he labeled Martyrs as a ‘messed up’ film. He said:
“I love Martyrs. And if you can’t handle messed-up movies, don’t see it. It will jack you up.»
Why So Many People Can’t Finish Martyrs
Martyrs Will Test Your Limits As a Human Being
Martyrs is structured in a way that deliberately tests its audience’s endurance, which is a major reason why it remains an unfinished film for many. The movie starts off feeling like a brutal revenge thriller centered on Lucie and her psychological torment. But just when the audience thinks that they understand what kind of movie they’re watching, the film takes a hard left turn, and this is where many viewers find their limit.
After Lucie’s story comes to a tragic end in a very graphic and violent way, her friend Anna discovers a hidden underground complex beneath the house where Lucie had just unleashed her wrath. As Anna goes deep into the dungeon, she sees a naked woman, who is just skin and bones, and a metal blindfold is attached to her skull with screws and nuts. Anna tries to free her. She gives her a bath and opens her blindfold, which eventually results in a bloodbath, and the woman dies after experiencing a manic episode.
Now, suddenly, the house is flooded by strange, well-dressed people who capture Anna, and the film transforms from a chaotic story of psychological haunting into one of cold, systematic, and almost scientific torture. The audience is introduced to a new character, known as Mademoiselle, a peculiar-looking elderly woman. She is the leader of this society who has been abducting young women for decades, subjecting them to unspeakable abuse in the belief that this process can create «martyrs,» individuals who, at the brink of death, can transcend their physical suffering and get a glimpse of the afterlife. Anna then becomes their next subject.
An American remake of Martyrs was released in 2015, directed by Kevin and Michael Goetz, with Troian Bellisario, Bailey Noble, and Kate Burton in the lead roles. It was both a critical and commercial failure.
The film’s second half is an unflinching, almost clinical depiction of this process. When it comes to gore, blood, and torture, it’s fair to say that it cannot get worse than this. The violence is no longer frantic or born of rage; it is methodical and purposeful, which makes it even harder to watch. The perpetrators aren’t some serial killers with twisted obsessions; they are calm, well-dressed people treating torture like a scientific experiment. This removes any sense of traditional horror movie «fun» or catharsis, forcing the viewer into the position of a helpless witness to unbearable, bureaucratic cruelty.
One fan review captured this feeling perfectly, saying that watching the film made them feel «sick, afraid, disgusted, angry, fearful, anxious, confused, hopeless.» And the film is designed to make the viewer feel helpless and complicit. It challenges the very act of watching horror by asking, as another fan insightfully suggested, «Why did you just pay me to show you what suffering looks like?» It’s this relentless commitment to showing the process of suffering without cutting away that pushes many viewers to turn the movie off or just walk away, which many do even 17 years later.
Martyrs Has a Chilling but Somewhat Satisfying Ending
For those who make it through the film’s grueling second half, Martyrs delivers an ending that is not one of justice but of a chilling mystery. This ending is what truly cements the film’s infamous legacy and elevates it from mere shock cinema to a piece of philosophical horror art. After being subjected to unimaginable torment, Anna appears to reach the ‘transcendent state’ that the secret society has been seeking in many of their experiments. Her eyes, clear and distant, seem to be looking into another world. Mademoiselle is brought to her side for the project’s ultimate purpose: Anna whispers what she has seen into Mademoiselle’s ear. This is the moment the entire sadistic project was for: the answer to what lies beyond death.
What happens next is what makes the ending so brilliant and so highly debated. A short time later, an elite group of people gather in the house where Anna was kept, and they are told that “Anna was able to see beyond death. And after coming back from the state, she has become a martyr.” As the followers gather to finally hear the revelation, Mademoiselle calmly prepares herself. Her assistant asks if she is ready to share the news. Instead of speaking, Mademoiselle, with a blank expression and tears in her eyes, says only, «Keep doubting,» before pulling out a pistol and taking her own life.
The secret dies with her. This refusal to give the audience an answer is a deliberate and powerful choice by director Pascal Laugier, who, inspired by idea-driven stories like The Twilight Zone, was more interested in sparking conversation than providing closure. The act leaves viewers with a permanent, haunting question: What did Anna say? The most common reading is a nihilistic one: she saw nothing, and the devastating realization that her life’s cruel work was for nothing drove Mademoiselle to suicide.
However, another, more subversive interpretation suggests that Anna’s final words were an act of ultimate resistance, a last act of revenge, where she perhaps described something beautiful but told Mademoiselle that, as a tormentor, she could never be a part of it, thus destroying the cult’s entire belief system from within. The film presents a group of wealthy, privileged elites who, having seemingly exhausted all earthly experiences, now wish to conquer the final frontier: the afterlife.
Yet, their method for achieving this ‘enlightenment’ is not one of personal sacrifice or spiritual discipline. Instead, they inflict unimaginable suffering upon an oppressed group, the young women they abduct, using their torment as a tool to get the answers they want. The film seems to deliver a clear, if unspoken, message here: those who wish to find God or to understand what lies beyond human reach can never achieve it by torturing another human being.
In real life, the path to true spiritual wisdom, as shown by millions of monks throughout history, involves leaving the material world behind and training one’s own mind and body, a journey of self-denial. The cult in Martyrs does the exact opposite; they indulge their intellectual curiosity by forcing the sacrifice upon others. Mademoiselle’s suicide, in this light, can be seen as the damning proof that their entire cruel project was a philosophical dead end.
Whatever she learned, it was gained through a method so fundamentally corrupt that it could not be sustained or shared, making the film a powerful moral statement disguised as a brutal horror movie. Hence, Martyrs is not a film to be recommended lightly. It’s a genuinely difficult and memorable watch. However, it is also a benchmark in extreme cinema, not just for its ability to shock but for its power to provoke thought.
