- Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Mademoiselle truly a monster who will torture children to death to accomplish her goals, or simply a philosopher desperate to find out about the Afterlife because of her old age? She justifies her action as For Philosophy but does that merit permission to use torture as the means to discover the secrets of martyrdom? And why did she commit suicide once she found out from Anna what really was the Other World?
- Moral Event Horizon: Lucie may be a tragic figure, but she certainly crossed the line when she doesn't just kill her torturers, but also their children.
- Nightmare Fuel: While very few people would ever shed a tear over Mademoiselle being Driven to Suicide upon finding out what awaited in the Afterlife, it still becomes a very big case of Nothing Is Scarier about the discovery she and her group had spent so many years to find out. What in God's name did such an unflinching, uncaring and unrepentant torture-queen, one who had placed untold suffering and death onto countless innocents without a single regret, hear from her last victim that shook her so badly that she offed herself before letting anyone else ever find out?!
- Paranoia Fuel: Just think, your completely normal neighbors could have their very own Torture Cellar.
- Retroactive Recognition: Xavier Dolan plays one of the family's children.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the most nihilistically depressing movies ever made. It starts with the supposed heroine gruesomely gunning down a terrified family with two kids, Pretty Little Headshots and Gory Discretion Shot both thoroughly averted, and it goes downhill and far beyond after that (at least in the original French version).
- The Woobie: Arguably the girl rescued by Anna but reduced to feral insanity because of Mademoiselle's tortures.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Martyrs
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