The French and Canadian collaborated film Martyrs came out all the way back in 2008 and it was back then when I saw it. I don’t remember much about the movie, save for a bit of the beginning, a terrifying bathroom scene, and the crazy ass ending, but I do specifically remember liking the movie, which brings me to the main topic for today, the remake of Martyrs, a film that cuts out all the grittiness and brutality, leaving us with a lifeless imitation. The 2015 Martyrs follows most of the original fairly closely, but starts to venture off into torture porn as the minutes roll on, eventually landing us at an ending that loses the punch the original had. It’s far from being terrible, but when the original is sitting out there easily accessible to watch, there is no reason to pick up this movie. On the other hand, everyone’s taste is different and what I don’t like, someone else might love, so Anchor Bay Canada has you covered on the Blu-ray front with an acceptable release. If you like to know more, please read on…
PRODUCT INFORMATION
DISCS: 1
RUN-TIME: 86 min
ASPECT RATIO: 2.40:1
RESOLUTION: 1080p
AUDIO: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
SUBTITLES: English SDH, Spanish
REGION: A/1
RATING: NR
PRODUCTION DATE: 2014
RELEASE DATE: Feb 2, 2016
PLOT SUMMARY
Ten-year-old Lucie flees from the isolated warehouse where she has been held prisoner. Deeply traumatized, she is plagued by awful night terrors at the orphanage that takes her in. Her only comfort comes from Anna, a girl her own age. Nearly a decade later and still haunted by demons, Lucie finally tracks down the family that tortured her. As she and Anna move closer to the agonizing truth, they find themselves trapped in a nightmare – if they cannot escape, a martyr’s fate awaits them…
MOVIE
I don’t want to spoil too much about the plot and feel that the plot summary above does a great job at giving you just the right amount of information needed. Everything I said in the opening is exactly enough to know what you’re getting into if you’ve already seen the original flick. I was interested in seeing how they would adapt the story for today’s audiences, but I can see that films like Hostel and Saw seem to have been on the minds of director’s Kevin Goetz and Michael Goetz, but instead of keeping with the graphic tone of the original, they gave us a PG-13-like flick instead. There just isn’t enough meat on the bones to please the gore hounds and the story was vastly superior in the original, which begs the question, why bother?
The Martyrs remake is a weird one as I didn’t hate the movie and it’s certainly not a badly made flick, with the actors and crew behind the scenes doing a good job with what they had, but I just can’t recommend it. It’s obvious that if I had to pick, I would pick the original Martyrs any day of the week over this toned down rehash.
BLU-RAY
Anchor Bay Canada has released Martyrs on Blu-ray with some solid video and audio. There are times where the blacks aren’t exactly black, but that very well could be the style the movie was going for. Besides that, I certainly have no complaints about the audio and visual side of things.
Onto the special features, we are only given a short 8 minute “First Look” at Martyrs, which I recommend you only watch after you’ve seen the movie, as it spoils everything. It’s not very informative and comes off as more a fluff piece to hype up the movie.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
- Martyrs First Look
VERDICT
As for the remake of Martyrs, I can’t see the point of checking it out if you’ve seen the original. I understand if curiosity gets the best of you and you do end up watching it, but you’ll probably be like me and feel like you should have just watched the original over again. As for any fan or those that do end up curious, you might as well pick up the Anchor Bay Blu-ray, as it’s a solid release, but lacks on the special features side of things.
RATING
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| I’m going to give it two zombie brains. One goes to the movie and the other goes to the Blu-ray. Two zombie brains are better than no zombie brains. |