“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.
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