It starts with a lie. Not a grand betrayal, just a nudge, a shortcut. A decision made quickly in a haze of alcohol and pride. Calibre doesn’t rely on elaborate plot twists or killers in the dark. It opens with a misstep and follows the chain reaction that destroys two lives and fractures a quiet Scottish village. Every minute is weighted. Every word, every silence, tightens the moral noose.
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This review discusses themes of violence involving children.
Marcus is the kind of man who makes things happen. Vaughn is the kind of man who lets things happen. Together, they set out for a weekend of bonding, booze, and bullets. The setting is bleak, beautiful: the Scottish Highlands, fog-drenched, endless, and watching. Cinematographer Márk Györi captures this isolation like it’s alive, breathing just behind every tree line. What begins as a simple hunting trip quickly becomes a suffocating moral test when a boy is shot. Vaughn pulls the trigger, but Marcus makes the choice: hide the body or risk their freedom. What unfolds is a snowball of denial, cover-ups, and emotional erosion that leaves no one intact.
The tension in Calibre isn’t about who the killer is or whether the truth will come out. It’s about how long two men can carry something so heavy without it breaking them. Vaughn, played with delicate, almost silent devastation by Jack Lowden, is not a bad man. But he becomes one, little by little, as each desperate choice erases the line between survival and surrender. Marcus, in contrast, is all instinct and self-preservation, a man who doesn’t flinch until it’s too late.
A Chain Reaction of Consequences
Writer-director Matt Palmer builds dread not with violence, but with conversations, glances, and pauses. The villagers aren’t monsters. They’re human. Logan, the community leader, is almost painfully reasonable. That makes everything worse. You can’t blame him for wanting justice. You can’t blame Vaughn for wanting out. But someone has to pay.
The final act is brutal in its simplicity. No Hollywood theatrics, just consequences. Real ones. Permanent ones. When Vaughn is forced to choose between killing his friend or dying alongside him, you see it all in his face: the grief, the resignation, the ghost of who he was before that trigger was ever pulled. And that final image, him, quiet in the dark, listening to his child cry while his soul unravels, is devastating in a way few films dare to be.
Calibre is a story of erosion: of trust, morality, and identity. It asks what kind of person you are when no option is right and survival means staining your hands. It’s quietly one of the most unsettling thrillers of the last decade, and one of the most honest. Distributed by Netflix, it’s a masterclass in restraint and consequence.
4 Brainless places to park your car, considering what just happened, out of 5
Quiet films that pack a punch: The Wind | Come True | The Oak Room | Heretic Also available on MUBI – Australia.
Moral collapse is a whole tag collective here on Mother of Movies (check the bottom of any feature article) and find more like this: For now Sew Torn 2025 and Humane 2024 are great examples.
Calibre | 2018 Watch The Trailer, then Stream It
Calibre
Director: Matt Palmer
Date Created: 2018-06-29 15:29
4
Pros
- Memorable
- Tense
- Not what you expected
Cons
- Quiet
- You will need to pay attention
