Yes, 8.5 out of 10. It's brutal and sad, and it starts as a revenge story before going somewhere far worse.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
8.5 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Persistent
It tends to stay with people for days, and it is hard to describe to anyone afterward.
DOG
Dog: fine
no dog in this one.
Ruling: Skip it unless you want a long stretch of graphic cruelty and an ending that leaves you with questions.
Martyrs runs 99 minutes. A girl escapes a slaughterhouse where she was held for more than a year, and fifteen years later she goes to confront a family she thinks was involved. It has jump scares, and they are the lighter part of the evening.
The premise, briefly
A woman who escaped captivity as a child goes after the family she believes was responsible, and her best friend gets pulled into what they find in that house.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
A secret society tortures Anna until she reaches a state it considers a breakthrough, and she is flayed alive. She whispers something to Mademoiselle, who then shoots herself. The film ends on Anna lying catatonic.
The scene you're dreading
In the final act, after the society captures Anna, she is beaten and degraded and then flayed alive. It takes up the last stretch of the film.
The dog
There's no dog in Martyrs. A dead mouse turns up in a pipe at one point.
Martyrs is sustained, graphic cruelty with a bleak ending, and it is most upsetting in the last stretch, once the society has Anna.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Lucie pays the Belfonds an unannounced visit
A girl named Lucie Jurin gets out of a slaughterhouse in 1971 after being locked up and tortured there for over a year. At the orphanage she befriends Anna Assaoui, who one day finds Lucie in the bathtub with cuts all over her arm. Lucie insists she did not do it herself. Later a disfigured, demonic woman attacks Lucie. Fifteen years on, Lucie breaks into the house of the Belfonds, an ordinary-looking family she believes helped torture her, and shoots every one of them with a shotgun. Then she phones Anna and gives her the address. The demonic woman keeps attacking Lucie in the house, but when Anna arrives and helps clean up, she sees only Lucie hurting herself. The woman looks like the prisoner Lucie abandoned at the slaughterhouse, and she is really Lucie's guilt taking a form. Lucie beats the surviving Belfond mother to death with a hammer, then goes outside and kills herself.
The living room has a secret door and a lot of explaining to do
The next morning, Anna finds a hidden passage in the living room that leads to an underground chamber. It holds lit photographs of torture and a living woman, emaciated and brutalized, which means Lucie was right about the Belfonds. Anna removes a steel blindfold stapled to the woman's skull and bathes her, then finds her cutting her own arm with a knife. A group arrives, kills the woman and captures Anna. Their leader, Mademoiselle, explains that they are a secret society that tortures people on purpose to create "martyrs". They believe the suffering will let a person report on what lies after death. So far they have only produced victims who broke down and could not speak.
Anna reaches the "final stage"
Anna becomes the society's newest subject. This is the scene people dread most, and it fills the last stretch of the movie. She is beaten and degraded for a period, then told she has gone further than any earlier subject and reached the "final stage", because she has accepted her fate. The society then flays her alive, and she is said to reach an "ecstatic" condition. When Mademoiselle arrives, Anna whispers something to her. The society's members come to the house to pay their respects to Anna and wait to hear Mademoiselle's announcement of the testimony. While they wait, Mademoiselle is in the bathroom, and her assistant Étienne asks through the door whether what Anna said was clear. She confirms it was, and asks him whether he can imagine what comes after death. When he says no, she pulls out a handgun, says he should keep doubting, and shoots herself.
The ending, explained
Mademoiselle dies by her own hand. The film closes on Anna, catatonic and stretched out on a table, apparently staring at something far away. A line of text on screen notes that "martyr" means "witness" in Greek. Home movies of the two girls play during the credits. By then Lucie, the Belfond family and the woman held beneath their house are all dead, and Anna is alive.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. Home movies of the two girls as children play during the credits, if you want to see them.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: no dog in this one.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Martyrs scary?
Yes. Martyrs is an 8.5 out of 10 with persistent dread that tends to last for days. It has jump scares and extreme gore, and most of its dread comes from long stretches of cruelty.
How does Martyrs end?
Anna is tortured and flayed by a secret society, and she whispers something to its leader, Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle then shoots herself, and the film ends on Anna lying catatonic.
Does the dog die in Martyrs?
No, because there's no dog in Martyrs. A dead mouse does turn up in a pipe, and a mother dangles it by the tail at the family table.
Is there a post-credits scene in Martyrs?
No. Martyrs has no post-credits scene, though home movies of the two girls as children play during the credits.
What is the secret society in Martyrs trying to do?
In Martyrs the society tortures captives to create "martyrs", people who accept their suffering and then report what they see of the afterlife. Until Anna, every subject had broken down and been unable to speak.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Martyrs is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You can learn what happens in Martyrs without sitting through it. Install Scaredy Cat and the internet's horror gets blurred before you see it.
