People kept telling me, you need to see “Calvaire, you need to see Calvaire.” They say, “Frontier(s) is not the true French Texas Chainsaw homage. Calvaire is.” So of course, I put it on my radar. Now that I’ve watched it, all I can say is holy shit.
Listen, of all the movies mentioned on this list, and for all the depraved things they do, their depravity does not even contend with Calvaire. Calvaire is a soul-raping (animal raping, man raping) movie, and you NEED to know that going in. I am not recommending it based on merit. I am recommending it based on the ideals of sub genre it is in. Is it traumatizing? Is it French? Then it has the right to be here.
Calvaire is about a man named Marc who is a singer and is traveling solo by van to get to a gig he has on Christmas. In typical horror film style, his van breaks down and he falls in with some colorful locals. All seems fairly normal at first, but then he walks by the barn and sees the villagers encouraging and cheering on sex with an animal. It’s at this point that your soul will try to slither out of you, so be aware.
From there on, shit only gets more insane and disgusting. We see that, for some insane reason, these people are seeing Marc as a woman who used to live there. I think you can see where this is going. Think of how uncomfortable you felt when you watched Deliverance, and multiply that by INFINITY and have you Calvaire.
If you manage to get through the film, you will be treated to one hell of a chilling ending, with a simple shot that will stay with you for a long, long time.
