[Du Welz's] art-house experimentation and performance-art approach to ensemble acting sacrifices plausibility in favour of increasingly pretentious surreal black comedy.

| Nov 16, 2011

The film is nasty and barely competent.

| Jan 20, 2007

A glossy rehash that's far less interesting and frightening than the classics upon which it's unimaginatively modeled.

| Original Score: C | Jan 11, 2007

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 26, 2006

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.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 6, 2006

So dead-set on being disturbing that it ends up tripping over its own hobbled feet and evoking fewer gasps than curdled little giggles.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Sep 23, 2006

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

Full Review | Aug 14, 2006

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 12, 2006

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.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 12, 2006

Directed by the newcomer Fabrice du Welz, the Belgian horror film Calvaire is pompous, but not without talent or shivers.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Aug 10, 2006

The very notion that movies about torture are considered 'horror,' and are more profitable now per foot of celluloid than any other type of independent film, is what's qualmy.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2006

While The Ordeal can't pass itself off as an art-house horror about the nature of love among the cannibals, it sometimes has a sick sexual frisson that resonates.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 5, 2006

A black comedy with flashes of genius, but let down by a sharp slide into chaos.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006