Calvaire (2004)

“Calvaire” is a 2004 French/Belgium horror film that has elements that remind me of films like “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Hostel” but in a psychological European way. In fact, this film also feels a lot like “Sheitan” and “Fronetier/s” because it’s all about a normal person having to deal with an entire village of people who are just not right. The worst of the group is an old hermit named Bartel who takes in Marc Stevens, a travelling singer/performer who puts on shows in retirement homes. Bartel essentially keeps Marc trapped in the village by destroyer Marc’s van when he claims that his fixing it. Bartel slowly loses his mind and comes to believe that Marc is his wife, a woman who left him years ago…and apparently slept around with the men in the village. The people of the village are rather bizarre and perverse themselves, as Marc discovers when he walks up to a family watching their teenage son having sex with the farm animals. Finally there is Boris, a young man who just wanders around searching for his lost dog Bella. This movie is a “slow burn” that takes is time, almost too much time, to build the suspense and the WTF factor. It’s the kind of movie you keep watching just to see what happens next to poor Marc.