Calvaire (The Ordeal)

Calvaire (The Ordeal) (2004)

  • 39% of critics liked it
    (23 reviews)

  • 50% of users liked it
    (18,490 ratings)

A traveling entertainer falls prey to a disturbed recluse in director Fabrice Du Welz's twisted, slow-burn riff on Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Having finished his latest performance at a remote retirement home, wandering singer Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) packs his gear into… More

Play Trailer

Unrated,
Directed By
Written By
Romain Protat, Fabrice Du Weltz
Genres
Drama, Horror, Art House & International
In Theaters
Aug 11, 2006 Wide
Palm Pictures

Critic Reviews

  • Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

    Du Welz has definite visual-dramatic talent. (Calvaire was a Cannes festival pick.) But, like Norman Bates' car, he need to get pulled out of the swamp.

  • G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

    What sells this movie is the realistic attention to detail and the bravura direction of Fabrice Du Welz, who draws a gut-wrenching performance from Lucas.

  • Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

    By the time it reaches its final act, the film rivals its American counterparts in intensity if not quite in explicit violence.

  • V.A. Musetto, New York Post

    Director-co-writer Fabrice du Welz has taken a clichéd premise and infused it with a stylish perversity that should have horror fans squealing with delight.

  • Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News

    Director Fabrice Du Welz doesn't reinvent the backwoods-freakshow formula, but there is something undeniably entertaining about violent psychos who are also committed art lovers.

Read all 15 critic reviews

See more critic ratings and reviews on Rotten Tomatoes

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

  • Arash X


    Boring artsy-fartsy horror

  • Drew S


    Infuriating, amateurish crap; the end result of a fitfully inventive mind watching too many American horror movies and deciding to piece together an absurdist homage comprised of about four or five mildly interesting set pieces. There's not much reason to care about all the… More

  • Emil K


    Fabrice Du Welz is a wannabe art-director and clearly fascinated about horror-films. Sure along with photographer Benoit Debie he is trying so very much to achieve something more than just a torture-porn, but he only falls into a same trap that many present-day directors who want to… More

  • _kelly .


    Survival horror for the art house crowd, Calvaire has a unique oddness that drives its deranged story straight into the eyeballs of viewers. The horror here is in the insanity of the captors and the atmosphere of the area where the main character is stranded. If you want silly… More

  • Greg S


    A struggling lounge singer breaks down in the Belgian countryside and is taken in by a lonely inkeeper who doesn't want him to leave. For 45 minutes nothing happens, and then it suddenly explodes into a surreal nightmare. There is a decent 60 minute movie here trapped inside… More

Read all 11 featured audience ratings

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Cast

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