As if French Horror hasn't disturbed us enough over the past few years (Haute Tension, Ils, A L'interieur, Frontiere(s)), it looks as if the most disturbing of them all, so far, is on the way.
It's a nasty little piece of celluloid called Martyrs.
"France. A night at the beginning of the 1970s. Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered wandering by the side of a country road. Near catatonic, she can say nothing about what has happened to her. The cops quickly find the place in which she's been incarcerated - a disused slaughterhouse. Every indication is that she never once left the empty, freezing room in which she was imprisoned. Filthy, starving, dehydrated, the child's body nonetheless bears no traces of sexual abuse - this was no pedophile abduction, but something far stranger. What happened in that icy room? And how did Lucie escape?"
I for one am geeked to see this, and not just because I'm digging the wave of quality that the French Horror scene is on; no, I need to see this because I'm curious to see if this pushes the boundaries that those who've seen it already say it does.
People have used words like punishing, uncomfortably realistic, and evil.
Fangoria had this to say:
"Words of advice: When the going gets tough—and it really does in a 10-minute silent orgy of subjugation—hold on tight through all the stark brutality, eye-watering flaying alive and other upsetting imagery. The rewards are truly astonishing in what emerges as the most strangely beautiful, utterly thrilling and profoundly astounding shock conclusion of a horror film in some time."
God, if that doesn't make your mouth water, you need to stop watching horror.
