Review: Martyrs – Extremely Disturbing. Watch It.

A young girl named Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) is found running half-naked down a country road after having been missing for over a year. During this time she had been held captive and subjected to a steady regimen of torture, both mental and physical, before she was able to to make her escape. Officials are able to locate the abandoned slaughter house she had been imprisoned in, but aside from evidence to support her claims, the building had been evacuated and her abusers were never apprehended. Lucie is placed in an orphanage where she eventually forms a bond with another young girl who resides there, the persistent Anna (Morjana Alaoui). Fifteen years later Lucie and Anna have remained together and Lucie thinks she has located two of her initial captors via a picture in a newspaper. With Anna warily in tow, Lucie pays a visit to the couples home with a loaded shotgun. She hopes by exacting some revenge that she will be exorcising a creature that plagues her, a creature in the form of a girl she left behind at the slaughterhouse and who takes delight in cutting Lucie to shreds at any opportune moment. [Read more...]

Review: Timecrimes (DVD) – Time Traveling Sleeper Hit!

Hector is a a simple guy enjoying a quiet afternoon at his country home doing a little bird watching. While doing so, he spies upon a young woman undressing in the nearby woods. His curiosity gets the better of him and he decides to take a trek into the forest to get a closer look. Once in the woods, he is attacked from behind by a masked man sending Hector fleeing deeper into the woods. With the man in hot pursuit, Hector finds refuge at a closed research facility and comes across a lone technician (played by the director, Nacho Vigalondo). He helps Hector by letting him to hide inside a peculiar looking container. When Hector emerges a few seconds later, he finds that the container was actually a beta time-machine, and that he is now a few hours in the past. Having effectivel alluded the man chasing him, Hector finds he now exists with a past version of himself. He is informed by the technician that he must not interact with that version or there will be dire consequences. The only way he can fix his situation is to send his doppleganger in to the past – leaving himself the only remaining Hector in this current time. In the case of Hector, absolutely nothing goes as planned. [Read more...]