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Blog Entry 3: The Director, Pascal Laugier

Martyrs - Pascal Laugier - Chroniques Organiques : Le Making of du film

Making of du second long métrage de Pascal Laugier où la parole est donnée à tous les intervenants du film. Genèse du film, cascades, effets

Review: Pascal Laugier’s ‘The Tall Man’ An Unfocused & Silly Horror Tale

Review: Pascal Laugier’s ‘The Tall Man’ An Unfocused & Silly Horror Tale

[Review] Pascal Laugier's 'Incident in a Ghostland' is Problematic Shock Value in a Half-Baked Story

Fans of writer-director Pascal Laugier’s vicious, bleak Martyrs (2008) have been patiently waiting for the filmmaker’s next exploration of h

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Blog Entry 2: Looking More Closely on the New French Extremity; MARTYRS (2008) Movie Review

In 2008 the French Extremist movie, Martyrs, was released. The movie was written and directed by Pascal Laugier and is a hallmark of the new French Extremity movement in the horror film industry. The psychological horror film is heavy and difficult to watch, leaving many viewers disturbed. The movie follows the french extremist themes by ignoring supernatural and extraterrestrial horror, and focusing on the vivd gore of body horror, violence, torture, trauma, pain, suffering, and death. The movie does not hold back in using the human body to display these difficult philosophical themes surrounding women's abuse, suffering, pain, and the unknowns of death.

The movie starts by following a girl named Lucie who was being held captive and tortured by a man and a woman. She was able to escape but spent her life in pain from the emotional trauma she endured. Her survivors guilt and trauma manifested into a zombie that would attack Lucie in the middle of the night. This zombie represented a victim Lucie failed to save when she escaped her captivity. The movie then fast forwards fifteen years later where Lucie is shown entering the house of her abusers and shooting them. Lucie's, long-time friend, Anna, from their psychiatric hospital, appears and helps her dispose of the bodies. While doing so, Lucie is sill being tormented by the zombie that she thought would disappear once killing their abusers. Lucie then ends her life, leaving Anna alone in the house.

Anna looks around the house to find the secret torture chambers downstairs where she finds a female victim who is emaciated, covered in wounds and locked up in up in steel plates. Anna takes the plates off her and bathes her, but her attempts to save her fail because the women ends up taking her own life shortly after. The movie then progresses, and the people in charge of these tortures enter the home and proceed to do the same humiliation and torture to Anna. They explain that what they were doing to all these women was an experiment. Their experiment was to have the women become martyrs for their suffering and see what happens in the after death. She kept the women at a level of near-death with a conscious mind. As they enter the last stage, they are so close to the death, but are still conscious enough to communicate with the people in the physical world around them. Anna makes it further than any other woman ever has, and even survives being skinned alive, which sends her into catatonic state of consciousness.

The movie uses vivid and gruesome body horror to display the message and horror throughout the film. The movie in its entirety fully represents what the new french extremity movement was all about. Some specific scenes was Anna being vividly skinned alive for the sake of the experiment. The use of the scene further aided in the plot of the movie and perfectly depicted how the new french extremity used the human body to display themes and horror. The point of the experiment itself is also another example of the new french extremity. The point of the experiment shows the deep philosophical need to understand human suffering, death and pain. For sometimes we fear what comes after death more than death itself. Additionally, the movie shows the viewers what trauma, survivors guilt, and women's abuse looks like. These are all some of the most grotesque and darkest taboos of the human existence that french horror is not afraid to display.

The Spaces and Places of Horror

This volume explores the complex horizon of landscapes in horror film culture to better understand the use that the genre makes of settings,

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Blog Entry One: French Horror (The New French Extremity)

The new French extremity is a type of horror subgenre that emerged in France in the early 2000s. The extreme horror genre takes a transgressive approach to horror due to the degree of gore, brutality, and violence represented in humanity. It is not just the extremity of these films that set them apart from the rest, but rather the fact that each film aims to deliver a notable and philosophical message through its gruesome depictions of human experiences. These films rarely depict the supernatural and extraterritorial horror displayed in American horror films, but rather show the pain, suffering, and trauma in the taboos of the human expericne. Many of these films confront social economic politics and sexual violence by using philosophical and intellectual inquiry. They use the physcial human body as a focal point while pairing it with grusome detail and violence to display the horror that is occurring in humanity itself.

What You Need to Know About New French Extremity

A look at the rise of the New French Extremity and why its films are difficult to categorize as merely horror.

10 French Extremity Films For Beginners

Hon, hon, hon, want to dabble in French Extremity? Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.

Films of the New French Extremity

The films of the New French Extremity have been reviled by critics but adored by fans and filmmakers. Known for graphically brutal depiction