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Calibre Movie Review

Calibre is a 2018 British thriller film directed by Matt Palmer and starring Jack Lowden and Martin McCann. It’s a very dark, suspenseful movie.

Vaughn and Marcus, who have been friends since childhood, travel to a remote area of the Scottish Highlands for a hunting trip. There, they accidentally shoot a child and his father. Then, they bury the body and try to conceal what happened from the village men. This movie screamed Scottish, which I adored. The forest is beautiful and also incredibly eerie. Some of the forest scenes are downright disturbing how well they were filmed.

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The village is also very well utilized into the plot with the emphasis on this financially poor community sticking so closely together being very interesting to witness. The mob mentality is evident here, but above all else they protect each other like no people from the city ever would.

The main pair is also very well realized. Jack Lowden and Martin McCann both did a terrific job here with their performances being full of emotion and believability. Their friendship is put to the test, but their dynamic was complicated to begin with. They are such different people that their relationship felt very interesting in the context of problematic male friendships. This is why the ending was super dark in its brutal conclusion.

Calibre has such a fantastic first half with a terrific build up that the second half somewhat disappointed me in its memorable, but overly neat finalization. I would have personally preferred a more ambiguous finale, but then again the scene in the barn is so tragic and powerful that I really liked it.

The cinematography is excellent, the score is incredibly intense and the whole movie is very suspenseful and downright scary in certain moments. Both the forest and the village are perfectly realized. The mood is one of desperation and doom and that permeates the entire picture. The direction is also surprisingly good. The premise is excellent, and although at times familiar, the script overall is very strong. It’s such an underseen Netflix gem that needs a bigger audience.

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Calibre is a hidden gem that needs a bigger audience. This 2018 thriller set in the Scottish Highlands is immensely intense and fueled by a sense of desperation and doom evaporating from its every scene. The premise is interesting, the script is familiar but well written, the first half is better but the second half is memorably brutal. The characters’ dynamic is also very interesting. It is a surprisingly well directed, thrilling flick.

My Rating – 4