With this film (to some extent also the later “Alleluia”), the Belgian Fabrice Du Welz turned into one of my favorite film madmen, and this diabolical combination of horror and black comedy is the perfect European answer to the cult American “Deliverance”, “The Hills Have Eyes” and and “Southern Comfort.” And while the protagonists of Boorman and Hill’s classic had the misfortune to find themselves in the American South and end up with the hillbillys there, the traveling Belgian performer Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) will realize in the worst way that the Arden hillbillies are even crazier. We meet Lucas as a bizarre entertainer who travels in a van around the Belgian and French provinces and performs in nursing homes.
The van is also home for Marc, and after his performance in the old people’s home, he went to a Christmas concert, but his old and rotten van will break down deep in the forest. After a storm, he will be found by a strange man looking for a lost dog and taken to an inn that looks like it hasn’t been open for years. Bartel still lives there and claims that he used to be a stand-up comedian and that his wife left him, and he will offer Marc not only a place to stay, but also to fix the van, and the decision to stay there will turn out to be one of the worst decisions he has ever made. man can bring in life. Unfortunately, Marc will have no choice, and what will soon begin to happen to him there will turn into a terrifying, unimaginable nightmare. In fact, what Marc is about to go through probably doesn’t even happen in his worst and most terrifying nightmare.
The title of the film “Calvary” perfectly outlines what this unfortunate man will go through after a close encounter with completely crazed locals, wild maniacs in relation to which the team from “Deliverance” acts as a company from a kindergarten. The very first meeting of Marco with the local population will be completely grotesque, and even though he will realize that it is time to run away from there as soon as possible, it will turn out that it is not so easy. It is interesting that Du Welz hired Benoit Debie as a cinematographer, who filmed Gaspar Noe’s insanity “Irreversible” a year earlier, and visually “Calvaire” seems so gray, slushy and gloomy, just like the fate that awaits the unfortunate entertainer.
And although “Calvaire” is one of the most shocking and extreme films, and with it Du Welz partially managed to fit into the current francophone extreme wave, in all that brutality, extremity and shock, it is at the same time a brilliant, grotesque black comedy. What Mark will go through is something only rare film characters have gone through, and after such a wild start to his career, Du Welz later seems to have calmed down a bit and we are still waiting for something similar. “Calvaire” is one of those movies that is remembered for all time once seen, and over the years this crazy and extreme horror has reached cult status for a reason.