And while there are occasional plausibility issues that surface during the remaining 80-odd minutes, most audiences will be too gripped by the dread-drenched developments to notice or much care. Vaughn and Marcus’ decision not to immediately report what has happened to the authorities is the crux upon which Palmer’s whole screenplay hinges. Accidental and tragic complications rapidly ensue. After a very boozy first night in a village pub with the (mostly) friendly locals, the hungover duo head off into the forest to bag some game.
That Vaughn is shown being waved off on the doorstep of their suburban home by his pregnant wife Anna (Olivia Morgan) will strike an ominous note for those even passingly familiar with the tropes of genre cinema. Striking out into unfamiliar territory has its hazards, of course, as longtime buddies Vaughn (Jack Lowden) and Marcus (Martin McCann) learn when venturing into the Caledonian wilds for a couple days’ shooting. He takes well-remembered 1970s classics like Straw Dogs, Deliverance and The Wicker Man as his obvious templates before wisely heading off in original directions of his own. Ben Baird’s sound design, meanwhile, is a thing of fretful beauty, seamlessly meshing a barrage of natural effects with Anne Nikitin’s creaking, squeaking, screeching score - there are points in “Calibre” when it might seem safer to close your eyes, but the filmmaking won’t let go that easily.Having turned out a handful of widely traveled shorts over the past dozen years including Island (2007) and The Gas Man (2014), Palmer graduates to a bigger canvas with confident aplomb here. The film’s secret weapon may be gifted editor Chris Wyatt (“God’s Own Country,” “’71”), who keeps the pace brisk but also unpredictable, often choosing to linger on quiet, conversation-driven scenes that reveal their teeth in their own good time. Györi, in his highest-profile assignment since Peter Strickland’s “Katalin Varga,” works wonders with the weather-saturated, bracken-tangled Scottish mountainscape, alternately playing up its menace or magnificence from scene to scene. If nothing here is exactly new, it’s the sheer, breathless precision and momentum of “Calibre’s” assembly that keeps it startling. He has a wily, wicked foil in Irish star McCann (following his lead turn in “The Survivalist,” not an actor afraid to be in the wars), and it’s their fraught but convincing bond that holds our sympathy even through their most reprehensible actions. An Olivier Award-winning stage actor now settling into a quietly potent, empathetic screen presence, Lowden impressively holds it together through all these key changes, even when his character emphatically does not. The fallout from this horrific accident proceeds in ways that are both grimly inevitable and gut-knottingly uncertain, as the villagers gradually sense something amiss - and Palmer’s poised Hitchcockian tension tactics give way to a more visceral rush of horror. With a dead boy suddenly on their hands, the shell-shocked men somehow worsen matters in self-defensive panic, with Marcus’s macho rashness and Vaughn’s passivity making for a precipitous pile-up of bad decisions as they cover their tracks.Īll that, and the film’s just getting started. Yet when the lads, a little worse for wear, head into the woods the next morning, catastrophe strikes: After training his rifle on an obliging deer, Vaughn shoots, only for an interloping child hiker to get fatally caught in the firing line. Still, things start off cheerfully enough as they arrive at their rustic woodside lodge, kicking off a night’s carousing and flirting with two village girls - albeit to the consternation of surly male locals, of whom only the older, community-minded Logan (Tony Curran) makes friendly overtures. Young, mild-mannered dad-to-be Vaughn (Lowden) reluctantly leaves his fiancée to spend the weekend with his reckless, randy, coke-snorting best friend Marcus (Martin McCann), who has planned a Highlands hunting expedition as a kind of final farewell to their old days of fancy-free fraternity.Įven if the trip has been arranged for his benefit, it’s clear from the outset that Vaughn views his attendance more as a favor to his untethered pal: Palmer’s script is tacitly perceptive on clashing modes of masculinity, as well as the shifting, drifting nature of male friendships. With minimal setup and on-the-fly character sketching, “Calibre” gets swiftly to business.
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