It’s easy to create a victim.

One of the more insightful recent examples of French extreme cinema and “torture porn,” Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs is a singularly divisive horror film experience. After police officers rescue her following over a year of repeated exposure to torture and torment, Lucie build up her strength in an orphanage and befriends Anna, another victim of abuse. Fifteen years later Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) and Anna (Morjana Alaoui) break into the house of a seemingly middle-of-the-road bourgeois family whom Lucie proceeds to slaughter with gory abandon because she believes them to be the perpetrators of her yearlong suffering and abuse as a child. These gruesome acts give way to some obvious problems (primarily having to do with how to dispose of the bodies) and the unexpected discovery of a hidden staircase that leads to the more affecting and startling atrocity exhibitions (and almost spiritual ordeals of survival) in the film’s second half. Though it is certainly one of the most graphic films we’ll be showing this quarter, Martyrs is not to be missed!

For the remainder of the quarter, we will be showing films by contemporary horror film auteurs from France, Japan, and the United States each week. Same time, same place. All are welcome. Tell your family, invite your friends.

Sponsored (or at least turned a blind eye) by the Literature Department, and produced by the usual gang of aficionados. More informative flyers to follow weekly.