Saint Martyrs of the Damned (French: Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés) is a Canadian drama film, directed by Robin Aubert and released in 2005.

[1] The film stars François Chénier as Flavien Juste, a tabloid reporter who writes about strange paranormal phenomena; when he is sent to the small Quebec town of Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés to investigate a series of strange disappearances, his photographer colleague Armand (Patrice Robitaille) disappears as well, but he finds the townspeople actively impeding his efforts to locate his friend.

[2] The cast also includes Isabelle Blais, Guy Vaillancourt, Monique Mercure, Monique Miller, Sylvie Boucher, Pierre Collin, Michel Forget, Carl Hennebert-Faulkner, Germain Houde, Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon, André Lacoste, Mathilde Lavigne, Hubert Loiselle, Alexis Martin, Alec Poirier, David Savard and Luc Senay.

Indeed, story’s set-up is so transparently thin that it’s a credit to helmer’s genre savvy that second and third act events obliterate the initial skepticism.

Cockeyed tributes abound, from nods to mainstream screamers Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to more esoteric fare such as Lynch’s Twin Peaks and even 2004 Hungarian chiller After the Day Before.