redrobin62-321-207311 At first I was going to give this film a 6, then opted for a 7 because I was comparing too much to New French Extremism like 'Irreversible' or 'Inside.' This film does, however, belong in the 'Sick & Twisted' category even though it's not as over-the-top as some movies can be.It's a sad and very simple story, told with a few things you won't see in American films - hicks dancing without women in a bar, pig fornication, a man who everyone takes for a long lost woman even though he's clearly a man, and a horny grandma. What more can you ask for? All the actors were outstanding. Their faces were full of so much pain that you could feel it, especially since the place where they live is bleak as hell. I don't think in such a depressed area I would survive too long. Hell, maybe I, too, would resort to pig fornication just to stay alive because, well, it is something to do, albeit gross.The main character, Marc Jacobs, unfortunately, was emotionally weak. He cried so much I was hoping the villagers would kill him soon and put us out of our misery. In that regard he really was like one of those continually screaming, annoying cheerleaders being terrorized by a madman.I was eager to view this film because its name pops up in quite a lot of lists regarding brutal and uncompromising films. It did deliver, though not in spades. But leave it to the French to come up with a movie like this. It was good because it helped pave the way for extremely brutal movies like 'Dogtooth', 'Antichrist' and 'United Red Army'. Yeah, it's worth watching.

Matt Melchert I'm of two minds about this movie. No, three.One: I don't like claustrophobic horror movies where things just get worse and worse. 3/10 for taste.Two: This was a well-crafted movie that, refreshingly, relied on characterization rather than special effects. The lack of music added to the feeling of claustrophobia. 8/10.Three: It was a delightful pastiche of many other movies, including Misery, Deliverance, Straw Dogs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Un Soir, Un Train, etc. I'm sure reviewers more familiar with European movies than I could name quite a few more. 10/10 for erudition.Avg: 7/10.

Lucabrasisleeps Reading the reviews, I expected a lot of brutal stuff, a real French extremity shocker. I remember watching Inside and Martyrs and sitting dazed after witnessing all the carnage. So what went wrong here? I should have got the clue when I saw that he was also the director of another movie that I dislike greatly, Vinyan. But I ignored all that looking at the reviews. There are 3 things that may be expected in an enjoyable horror/exploitation movie. First, large amounts of gore and nudity. Remember we are living in the Saw and Hostel age. Nothing less than absolute carnage will satisfy viewers. This movie has very minimal violence. Whatever disgusting things are there are all implied. That should normally be good right? Well maybe if you are talking about an atmospheric creepy horror film. But not when you are making a movie where the disgusting things are the center. Then there is no other way, you need to go all the way. This movie doesn't even meet that expectation halfway through. Hell John waters was making shocking stuff 30 years ago. This movie doesn't raise the bar even a little bit.Then there is another aspect that you might expect. Atmosphere. a creepy horror film which starts slowly and then explodes. Nothing like that. They don't even try to creep you out. The director never intended to make an atmospheric horror film. He just wanted to make a long(well it feels long) boring mess and try to present himself as an intellectual who challenges the status quo. Sort of like Bunuel, only he doesn't have half that talent. Then maybe at least entertainment. Maybe a fun ride without much violence or atmosphere. Something like, those Hollywood fun movies where you just sit back and enjoy. Here I was struggling to keep my eyes open with the non events going on. I kept expecting something that could redeem the movie, a twist, a last act of violence, something. I got nothing. At least Vinyan had that, a last scene which may have confounded viewers but which seemed passionate. Here there was a non ending and then it switches to the credits. Gore lovers would hate the movie of course. Depravity lovers....well any rape scene, anything is cut short immediately. Even the much hyped pig shagging thing ended so quickly with nothing shown (of course here you can't blame the film makers because what can they really do?). The crucifixion scene was also very short. That pretty much covers most of what happens in the movie. Unless you include the constant whining of the old men and the whining of the main character. I pretty much described the whole movie, so no need to worry about what is left in the movie. Pretty much my least favourite movie of the French horror wave.2/10

jzappa Lounge singer Marc rounds the boonies of Belgium in a van crooning at assisted living facilities. On stage he's very debonair, with a sequined cape and blush. He sings ballads and seventysomethings and lonely nurses faint away under his enchantment. They propose themselves to him backstage, slip nude photos of themselves into his coat. Marc's stage presence is quite effective. But off stage he's hardly there, without feeling and consequence and whose vision of making it big is distant.Marc's road to his Christmas show takes him through the thickly wooded moorland in Walloon country. It's a murky, inhospitable place, a hinterland of rain-soaked forests and remote, decaying farms. When his van stops working, Marc makes his way to the sole inn nearby. It's a emphatically unadorned one run by an ex-stand-up comedian, the stout and heartbroken Bartel, played skillfully Jackie Berroyer. Bartel provides his subservient generosity and service in repairing the van in return for some companionship. Marc endures. He's got a choice? It's over a tranquil dinner that Bartel's manner starts to alter. Bartel tearily pleads Marc to sing a love ballad. Marc reluctantly accommodates and his performance is enough to persuade Bartel of what he's perhaps thought the whole time: Marc is his long lost unruly wife Gloria. Calvaire is an arduous, revolting and fully effective horror film from Belgium. Part Psycho, part Deliverance and all sinister, it is at the same time disconcerting and gripping. And what sells it is the realistic interest in nuance and the haunting direction of Fabrice Du Welz.This against-type psychological character film, shot on 16mm and printed into anamorphic format, is one of those uncommon, uncategorizable films that subsist at that frequently disquieting junction of gallows humor and horror. Like Roman Polanski's broadly hailed early films, Fabrice du Welz's Calvaire underscores the farce of our existential experience with the bleakest of humor utterly absent in modern American genre cinema. If this were an American film, the fiends at the hub of Calvaire would be misshapen, the result of inbreeding or radioactivity or chemical exposure, anything to separate them and their acts from human. But the monsters at the core of du Welz's Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre hybrid are as human as you get. And that makes the film all the more startling.Du Welz coalesces horror upon horror until this somewhat arguably surreal fable peaks in a sequence so alarming and morbidly engrossing that even Tobe Hooper would put his fingers over his eyes. It doesn't alleviate anything that cinematographer Benoit Debie is so excellent at depicting the churning, whirling insanity. Repulsive, sordid, unhinged, du Welz bizarre, forceful gut-wrencher is an uneasy tumble into insanity.