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Rank This Matchup or Comment/Reply Below
on 11/3/2010
Maybe both of these could be looked at as movies that are about a person who is sacrificed for a misguided religious purpose. Requiem is about a young woman with epilepsy who also suffers from psychological conflict due to her strict religious upbringing. She starts to believe that she is possessed, though the movie never clearly establishes whether the problem is all in her head rather than supernatural (but a psychological cause is implied). Martyrs is about a cult who tortures a young woman in order to cause her to transcend the confines of her mortal coil and see into the afterlife, or something like that. Requiem is much more restrained in every way than Martyrs, but in both cases the girls are victimized for a spiritual purpose. (NOTE: Requiem is essentially a non-supernatural version of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and only shows the mental breakdown of the girl before the exorcism really takes place.) Martyrs is probably more effective, if only because it's so brutal and the implications of the climax are more intriguing. Requiem doesn't have much of a climax, which lessens the impact of the girl's mental detorioration. It tells, rather than shows, what her fate is. It is true that the quiet tone of Requiem wouldn't have went well with a graphic exorcism at its climax, but I still felt like I was left hanging.
