Martyrs is a 2008 French-language psychological horror film written and directed by Pascal Laugier, and starring Mylène Jampanoï, Morjana Alaoui, and Catherine Bégin.

It follows a young woman's quest to seek revenge against individuals who abducted and tortured her as a child, and her friend, also a victim of abuse.

Fifteen years later, Lucie invades the home of a seemingly normal family, the Belfonds, whom she believes were involved in her torture as a child, and kills them with a shotgun.

She removes a steel blindfold that has been stapled to the woman's skull and helps bathe her, only to later find her mutilating her arm with a knife.

They capture young women and inflict on them systematic acts of torture, believing that their physical suffering will result in transcendental insight into the world beyond.

Though they have only produced "victims" who succumbed to the pain and are unable to speak, the group is determined to create martyrs who accept their suffering and report their visions of the afterlife.

Members of the society gather at the house to pay veneration to Anna for her martyrdom and hear Mademoiselle's announcement of the groundbreaking testimony.

Critic Maitland McDonagh notes that the film contains the theme of the Roman Catholic notions of sainthood and martyrdom in its exploration of spiritual transcendence via physical pain.

[6] Laugier himself stated that he intended to make the film's audience "feel real pain" and to "share it as part of an honest process [of] communion...

[7] Literary professor Gwendolyn Audrey Foster similarly challenges the sentiment that Martyrs belongs in this category, writing that its "nihilism is complete and impossible to dismiss, making it a far different experience from other extreme horror films", also citing Laugier's statement that the film exists in a world "in which evil triumphed a long time ago".

[8] Foster also notes Laugier's intent to force the film's audience to bear witness to the pain of the violence represented, writing that its viewers "become martyrs in a sense".

[8] Writer-director Pascal Laugier, who had previously made his directorial debut with the supernatural horror film Saint Ange (2005), wrote the screenplay for Martyrs after being inspired by Eli Roth's Hostel (2005), and intended to "make a movie about pain.

[10] On pitching the project, Laugier commented that "the film was rejected by all the big French studios, by a lot of actresses, too.

[10] Morjana Alaoui, who was cast as Anna, was also attracted to the project after being impressed by its screenplay: "The first time I read the script, I was just like, 'Wow.

[12] Laugier commented that the main difficulty other than the technical issues such as special effects was to keep the actresses in a heightened emotional state.

[10] Jampanoï recalled that she found the shoot emotionally difficult: "Every night when I went back to my room, I just cried, because I was so physically and psychologically tired.

[13] Production was temporarily halted for over a month after Alaoui fell 3 metres (9.8 ft) off a soundstage, breaking several bones in her foot.

[22] The Minister of Culture Christine Albanel eventually asked the Commission of Classification to change its rating, which was done in July 2008.

[16] A heavily edited cut of the film was given an R rating by the Motion Picture Association for "disturbing/severe aberrant behavior involving strong bloody violence, torture, child abuse and some nudity.

The website's critical consensus states, "A real polarising movie, this Gallic torture-porn is graphic, brutal, nasty and gruesome and not to everyone's taste.

[17] Critic Maitland McDonagh wrote that the film "has more than can-you-top-this shocks in mind: For all its brutality, Martyrs is conspicuously high minded, rooted in the centuries-old notion that spiritual transcendence lies just beyond the horizon of pain...  You don't have to be Catholic to shudder at Pascal Laugier's Martyrs, but it helps.

[30] Jamie Graham of Total Film called Martyrs "one of the most extreme pictures ever made, and one of the best horror movies of the last decade".

[31] He also likened it to "a torture-porn movie for Guardian readers", one that owed as much to Francis Bacon and Raphael as to its genre contemporaries.

By contrast, writer and film scholar Jon Towlson says Martyrs' "political intentions are less overt, more ambivalent and ultimately nihilistic" compared to its contemporaries.

[32] Commenting on the controversy surrounding his film to IndieLondon, director Laugier said he felt "insulted" by many critics' misinterpretations of Martyrs.

[40] In the United States, Genius Products released the film in both unrated and R-rated DVD editions in April 2009.

[44] In 2008, Laugier confirmed in an interview that he was in the middle of negotiating the rights for Martyrs to be remade in the United States by director Daniel Stamm.

It’s tough to keep your eyes set on the horrifying images that unfold on-screen, but for those willing to dive into its heady themes, it’s even harder to look away.