The two navigate overly friendly and hostile strangers, each getting a turn to diffuse situations. This is all on display in an early pub scene. Their dialogue is pedestrian, but they’re comfortable in the quiet, in that way only longtime friends can be. They have a rhythm that tells viewers everything they need to know about Marcus and Vaughn’s friendship. McCann and, especially, Lowden are great. Screengrab via Netflix UK & Ireland/YouTube But each step of the way Vaughn and Marcus are forced into impossible moral and strategic dilemmas. Then Calibre becomes a cat-and-mouse game. But the townsfolk keep lingering and eventually Marcus slips. They need to cover their tracks and set up an alibi. It’s riveting because their plans make sense. They may as well have jumped in a pit of quicksand. Vaughn and Marcus try to get out of town as fast as they can, but their attempts to leave just slow them down more. After that inciting incident in the woods, the story relies on inevitability rather any gimmicks to hold viewers’ attention.

All I can say is that I let out an audible “whoa.” Marcus immediately compounds the problem with another action, and in the space of a minute, the friends have hit a point of no return.Ĭalibre is a story almost totally devoid of surprises, and it’s all the better for it. I won’t spoil the way in which things go south. When you have a person reticent to shoot a gun prodded along by someone excited to shoot, well, bad things tend to happen. The duo heads out to a tucked-away village in the Scottish Highlands. Marcus is a bachelor’s bachelor, looking to drink, smoke, snort, and hook up. The movie starts with Marcus (Martin McCann) and Vaughn (Jack Lowden) getting away for a weekend hunting trip. The sense of dread that gripped me throughout isn’t a sensation that feels good-but it’s the feeling you get when a filmmaker, in this case, writer and director Matt Palmer, has you completely in their palm.

Like, “stop the movie a few times just to get a break” intense. Calibre is a descent into darkness, and it’s thrilling. A python has never choked me out, but I imagine watching Netflix’s Calibre is a reasonable approximation.

Calibre 2018 ebert