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The whole plot with the death cult and the metaphysical questions that plot raises or attempts to raise doesn't happen until fully an hour into the movie, after essentially an entire rounded plot has already transpired. It sounds as though it's meant to be something of a surprise.

It presents, first, that torture and suffering is unjustifiable and the result of perverted power structures. It simultaneously forces you to consider that, while torture is bad, there may in fact be a justification large enough to elide it, and to consider what it means if there is. This latter bit is something along the lines of a thought experiment where you attempt to consider whether or not there is a context in which a bad thing can become a good one. Except that that latter bit, as presented by the movie, is not a real idea, it is a disgusting one propped up on a flimsy, inchoate shell of poorly thought out metaphysics. The religious/spiritual element is actually so close to genuine beliefs in the sanctity of bodily suffering, the worship of torture, that for this movie to be unequivocally against it, there must be no ambiguity. But that is not what the film does: when Anna experiences her epiphanies, they are exclusively for the witness of the audience. The voices, the track into her eye showing that old cliche of 'the light,' those are not witnessed or imagined by the cult. They are for us, us only, and they exist solely to muddy clear moral judgements and force us to consider that the sanctity of torture may, in fact, be right after all. The movie plies us with this line of reasoning before ending without having said if it was worth considering or not.

So, what must the viewer do when a film presents something as bad while simultaneously planting the idea that there is a context in which it must be part of the ultimate good? Examine whether it has earned either sentiment. It has not. This is a very crude movie whose ideas are summed up in two very basic, very unenlightening, very unphilosophical dialogue scenes that go nowhere towards justifying either of its ideas. We have watched horrific suffering for two reason: to consider whether or not it is bad, and to consider whether or not it is good. No points for believing the former, that is simply being decently human; no points for believing the latter, that is despicable. No points either if the purpose is to indict the audience for entertaining ideas the movie, itself, is making them entertain, that is failure of argument.

Moreover, Martyrs' technique in the torture sections is cool and removed; it stands impassively, depicting, but making no judgements. And here is the moral problem: it relies entirely on the morality the audience brings with it, while at the same time trying to undermine that morality by planting an idea contrary to the one the audience is likely to bring, ie. that torture is not saintly.

True, though I'm not sure that the quest for enlightenment is anything more than a MacGuffin for the real concerns of the film - the film suggests that the afterlife may exist but that cult are doing the wrong thing by trying to hurry the process and get there by proxy. Which is why the ending can be seen as ironic - how can you force somebody to experience something on your behalf when you quite literally do not feel their pain?

that the work done by these sick people is nightmarish and wrong regardless of what the result of their efforts are?"

torturing and killing people is WRONG?"

As a huge bird-lover, I was hoping that the constantly-panned-to statue would come to life, and the film did not disappoint!