Really Awful Movies

If it were to exist in a bubble, the 2015 American remake of Pascal Laugier’s 2008 French masterpiece Martyrs would be considered a passable yet tepid horror flick that introduced a few interesting ideas but never saw them through to fruition. An acceptable time-waster to stream over Netflix if absolutely nothing else suited your fancy. Perhaps it would be given two stars out of five. But alas, things just don’t work that way. And when held next to the original, 2015’s Martyrs withers and dies — revealed as nothing but a cheap forgery of a towering treasure — a knockoff which isn’t fooling anybody.

Much vitriol has already been thrown in the direction of co-directors Kevin and Michael Goetz, screenwriter Mark L. Smith (who also scribed this year’s wholly undeserved yet most likely to win Best Picture, The Revenant), and production company (and horror hucksters) Blumhouse for having the temerity to go near a picture as complex and brilliant as Martyrs, so I’ll try not to kick those men further when they’re already way, way down. What I will say, however, is that the original Martyrs is one of the most brutal, challenging, visceral, hard-to-watch yet ultimately rewarding and transcendent horror films of this millennium. It’s a film so unflinching in its depiction of unbridled brutality that watching it is a test of endurance that few can endure. And yet, if one manages to stay with it, they will be rewarded with one of the most indelible and uncompromising endings in horror history. It is a film that is the veritable definition of the word “sublime”.

After watching Laugier’s Martyrs, I felt shaken, unnerved and shattered, yet paradoxically stunned, stimulated and in absolute awe of the experience. After watching The Goetz Brothers’ pale imitation, I felt absolutely nothing. After watching the original, I was paralyzed and mentally destroyed (in the best possible way.) The film forced me to confront and ponder dark and profound existential and metaphysical questions; the remake forced me to ponder just what it was I felt like making for lunch.

There is no reason for this version of Martyrs to exist. It’s hollower than Henry’s bucket. One is reminded of the octogenarian who took it upon herself last year to restore that Spanish fresco depicting Ecce Homo by 19th century artist Elias Garcia Martinez and ended up turning the religious masterpiece into an amateurish nightmare that resembled a disfigured monkey. At least that desecration of a masterwork was done with the best of intentions and could be chalked up to senility. Alas, the same cannot be said for this.

Avoid at all costs.

* (out of five)

Paradoxically, it’s easy for us to take a jaundiced view of cover kudos. While we’re grateful when they’re ours, all too often a surfeit of pull quotes invariably leads to viewer disappointment. For The Collapsed, however, the approbation is on-point.

So we’ll take that Rue Morgue ballyhoo and that Fango fellatio. “Genuinely shocking,” with “terror to spare?” More often than not, yes.

While survivalist flicks are a dime a dozen, For $40,000 Justin McConnell and company have done something first-rate with nary pocket change to spare.

Like other survival flicks, there’s people on the run. In this case a family: a vain, sullen teen daughter who thinks nothing of reconciling her survival instincts with a need to shave her legs; a brooding son who can’t seem to please his pa, the armed alpha patriarch; and lastly, there’s the very practical mom.

Like their post-apocalyptic brethren, they’re trying to make it to a Promised Land, in this case one Dover’s Bend where it’s rumored they’ll all be safe. But it’s miles away, naturally.

The foursome take refuge in Lower Bay subway station (the evocative, unused except for movie shoots, Toronto transit facility) and eventually hightail it out of the city to the countryside. They raid a general store for supplies but soon flee, as it’s being guarded by a gas-mask-wearing assailant (pictured in the film’s poster) and an armed associate.

What’s chasing them through the forest are both armed assailantsas well as a heavily-breathing presence – an “it.”

And exactly what is chasing them? And for what purpose? Patience will be rewarded, especially toward the end, but this review is spoiler-free.

But expect the unexpected. The cover art is misleading, to say the least.

The Collapsed is not a contagion flick, with survivors holed up in a re-purposed property under siege from infected vector cannibals transmitting pathogens. Their world ends, as the poster alludes to, not with bangs but with whimpers.

Pasha Patriki’s camerawork is frenzied and paranoia inducing, with focus in, focus outs, and Rob Kleiner’s score is a character unto itself, ratcheting up the tension. There are dream sequences that are particularly jarring and sinister.

While John Fantasia is dynamite as the blue collar everyman dad, some of the performances suffer a tad due to budget/time constraints of the shoot. Hey, this cost $40 grand. Take it with a shaker of salt. Still, time well spent.

***1/2 (out of 5)