![]() ![]() Vacations rarely go smoothly in movies - or villages - like this. ![]() We learn there's a raucous festival approaching, signaling that a communal Wicker Man-like scenario might be in the offering, and it's clear that word travels fast in the muddy, gray town. The locals, sporting thick beards, thick accents, and even thicker sweaters, welcome the two buddies to their sleepy community with a combination of rugged hospitality and hardly concealed spite. After some awkward banter between the two guys as they set off on their journey, the men arrive at exactly the type of cozy, remote hamlet where you know bad shit is about to go down. The opening stretch, which finds tension in moments of unease and mistrust, might be the most effective part of the film. It attacks your nerves with studied precision. In its best moments, Calibre plays like a Highlands-set episode of Breaking Bad mixed with an Edgar Allen Poe story. The Scottish production from debut filmmaker Matt Palmer has a fairly stock premise - father-to-be Vaughn (Jack Lowden) joins his rough-around-the-edges buddy Marcus (Martin McCann) for one last hunting weekend full of revelry and, of course, bloodshed - but it balances the familiar set-up with subtle performances, a restrained visual approach, and a striking sense of place. It's also a bright spot in Netflix's recent batch of underwhelming thriller offerings. Did he lead us astray here? Well, we watched Calibre and can confirm: This is a work of stomach-churning suspense worthy of King's praise. Still, as any reader of his old Entertainment Weekly columns can attest, King has deeply eclectic (and sometimes slightly goofy) taste when it comes to films. He's got some authority in the nail-biting space. When the mind behind novels like Carrie and The Stand (not to mention recent Netflix stand-outs like Gerald's Game and 1922) calls a movie a "genuine nail-biter" and claims it has a "Hitchcock vibe," it's worth paying attention to it. In between book picks, dog photos, and impeachment requests, the wildly prolific horror author uses his chatty, frequently updated Twitter account to make the occasional TV and movie endorsement, often focussing on the spooky genre that he made his name in. The last shot of a character’s stunned, ravaged expression – an emptied out look of despair – is truly chilling in a way that no hand suddenly shooting up from the ground or it-was-all-a-bad-dream reveal could be.Earlier this month, Stephen King recommended Netflix's woodsy new thriller Calibre. Another welcome departure from expected form is to have the way the film emphasises the cultural, intra-national divide between urban and rural Scots – a duller, less imaginative movie might have made the unfortunate but self-centred visitors Englishman or blokes from abroad.Įlsewhere, Palmer and co flirt with the conventions of horror movies, although ultimately the horror is purely psychological, not supernatural in origin. ![]() The constant invitations to stay for the bonfire and ceilidh will evoke anticipation in some that this might go the way of The Wicker Man. And so they lavish the young visitors from down south with hospitality they can’t refuse, no matter how eager they are to get the hell out of Dodge. The locals, led by hale fellow Logan (the redoubtable character actor Tony Curran), are troubled by the community’s economic misfortunes and keen to draw Marcus and his imagined oodles of capital into shoring up the area financially. Photograph: Anne Binckebanck / NetflixĪmongthe more thoughtful flourishes here is the way Palmer plays with the notion of debt and investment. Jack Lowden and Martin McCann in Calibre. Up for a bit of mock-macho manoeuvres before the onslaught of parenthood, Vaughn agrees to go on a deerstalking trip in the Highlands with his friend Marcus (Michael Fassbender-lookey-likey Martin McCann), a chum from the boys’ boarding school days who now makes serious bank in the financial sector. In the foundational first section, we meet Vaughn (Lowden), a nice regular guy living in a smart street near the park in Glasgow, who is about to become a father with his partner (Olivia Morgan). That’s a point worth stressing should you consider watching this on Netflix, given on that platform it’s so much easier to skip on to something else if the opening 10 minutes of a film fails to grab you. Just when you might expect Palmer to break out the fake blood, the film goes unexpectedly, and quite literally quiet, after a somewhat plodding first third. Anchored by a brace of range-flaunting performances from its two leads Jack Lowden and Martin McCann, Calibre evolves unexpectedly into a moral puzzle about the limits of friendship and forgiveness.
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