Calvary (2014)

An Irish import so dark it makes Guinness look like lemonade. This arresting bleak-fest gets right to the point. In its first scene, a Catholic priest hears a confession from an anonymous adult survivor of child rape (the creep was another priest who’s now dead). All that the mystery man wants is to kill someone. An innocent person is best. The priest, the one listening, will do. Our would-be killer gives the priest a week to live, along with a time and a place. And then he’s gone. Our priest sits alone, seeming to accept his fate. It’s a simple scene–no music, a mere sliver of light, couldn’t be more stark–and then things get complicated, emotionally and spiritually. In the week that follows, our priest goes about settling affairs (and not very well), soul-searching and sometimes limply wondering who in his little country village was in the confessional that day. That’s not an easy task because he seems to know nothing but dirtbags and the emotionally damaged. There’s hardly one healthy soul onscreen. The Irish sky above is constantly overcast. Below, even more gloomy.