Trivia / Martyrs

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• California Doubling: Being a Canadian co-production, Montreal was doubled as an unnamed location in France.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Estonia: Witnesses
  • Turkey: Torture Chamber
• Creator Backlash:
  • In a 2010 interview that Xavier Dolan (who plays Antoine, the son of the family that Lucie kills) was in regarding his film I Killed My Mother, he spoke briefly about his very negative experience working on a film where he met actress Patricia Tulasne, who plays the mother of his character's boyfriend in his film as well as his mother in this film. While Dolan never named the film he was talking about, the two were in no other films together prior, and he said that their characters were killed with a shotgun and also noted that the director of the film was French, which points to it being this.
  "I met Patricia [Tulasne] on a movie that we shot together as actors, which was a terrible experience. She was my mother in that movie and we were killed with a shotgun. We had squibs and blood and all the blood was getting into my hair and it was horrible. The director was French and he was horrible."
  • This was also why the film was released directly to DVD in America. It was picked up for distribution by The Weinstein Company, but when co-founder Bob Weinstein saw the film whilst on a plane, he was so revulsed by it that the company decided not to go through with a planned theatrical release, and instead, as mentioned, was released straight to DVD in both a heavily cut R-rated version and the original French cut, which was released unrated.
  • According to Bloodbath & Beyond, the Blumhouse Productions usually promote their own movies on their official website (which also acts as a news site for horror genre), but the one movie that they did not promote was the Martyrs remake they financed and produced. No trailer, photo stills, poster or press kits were posted on their website — as if they chose to distance themselves from the movie.
• Creator Breakdown: The movie's writer-director, Pascal Laugier, has stated he wrote the screenplay while in a state of clinical depression bordering on suicidal thoughts, and it really shows.
• Disowned Adaptation: When asked about the American remake, Pascal Laugier responded:
  "I had a bad contract, I didn't even get paid for it! That's really the only thing I regret in my career: That my name is now associated with such a junk film and I didn't even get a cent for it! I tried to watch it but only got through 20 minutes. It was like watching my mother get raped! Then I stopped. Life is too short. In the American system, a movie like ‘Martyrs’ is just not possible - they saw my movie and then turned it into something completely uninteresting."
• Fake American: Even though the movie is supposed to take place in France, a francophone can tell that most of the actors are Quebecers passing as French people.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Poland: Martyrs: Doomed to Fear
• International Coproduction: Between France and Canada, where this movie was mostly shot.

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