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Comment on Discussion Thread 🍫 Sunday 3 August 2025

useless_modern_god@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Coincidentally, I watched a French horror film last night called Martyrs (2008).

There was a comment review on this thread recently about 28 Years Later and how it had no redeeming value (which is a preposterous notion by the way)

and so…

Martyrs (2008) is a movie that actually has no redeeming value. It’s a purely violent and brutal torture porn type film with no real discernible message.

It didn’t make me irrationally angry, just confused. Who was this movie made for? and why? What does this piece of art bring to the world?

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Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Morning shows. Don’t talk to me about morning shows

decades ago I used to stay up to watch Today, an American syndicated morning show. I was like 😧. The journalism/interviews were better than anything I had seen on ABC or SBS. And then I was 😖The journalism of “trash” American morning shows is better than our best journos.

I’m not saying US morning shows are good now or that I agree with their views.

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StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Oh I’ve seen Martyrs (the original and the remake), and yeah I agree with you. It felt like the theme was “trauma can make you transcend and see beyond!” Which is fkn gross.

The only barely redeemable quality of that film was the end, where we don’t hear what she said to Madame, and it was cryptic. I wanted more of that feeling, not the gratuitous torture the MC endures at the hands of some weird rich people cult.

I feel similar about A Serbian Film. That has no redeemable qualities at all, as well, and I do not believe the creators intent that the film was a comment on the Serbian Film industry. It was fkn gross for the sake of being gross, and they should just fkn own that instead of making up reasons as to why it’s a “commentary”.

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- useless_modern_god@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  You have a good point with the cryptic message whispered by the victim at the end. It’s ostensibly the revelation to what the fate of our soul is after death. It’s a compelling idea that didn’t require 90 minutes of cold brutality to reach that point.
  
  Flatliners (1990) did it so much better.
  
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  - StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Flatliners is a classic! I love that film.
    
    A compelling idea pulled off extremely well; unlike Martyrs lol!!
    
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Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I totally understand where that movie is coming from.

if you visit european art museums, churches and city halls they are full of paintings of martyred saints being brutally tortured. Not just a few paintings, so many. For example, the historic town hall of Leuven ( a city famous for Enlightenment values ) has a giant painting in a public room of a guy getting his intestines wound out . Why? These paintings are just hanging there , so many of them, and are totally out of context in space, time and culture.

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- StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I think it could have been done better, and made the Martyr theme more prominent. Instead it was “watch a woman who is traumatised, go through more trauma and body horror”.
  
  Actual martyrs died for a cause or a religious reason. She didn’t have a long held personal belief that would warrant such treatment, it was just a fucked up cult doing it to her for a stupid reason.
  
  I’m glad that dumb cult didn’t get the answers they wanted.
  
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  - Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    looking at the paintings you don’t see a reason , there is no context at all, it’s just gruesome suffering
    
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