The Calendar Killer (2025) Movie Review

A dated, predictable and unoriginal thriller

On paper, The Calendar Killer has all the ingredients to be a killer adaptation. The book it’s based on has been well-received, there’s a distinct ticking clock mechanic to ramp up the tension, and the sharp 90 minute run-time allows you to get in and out without dragging the screenplay unnecessarily. A sure-fire hit, right?

Well, The Calendar Killer is a movie that, unfortunately, slips up where it matters most. This is a thriller that’s not particularly thrilling until the final act, and a mystery that’s not really a mystery, given you’ll figure out who the killer is after the first 15 minutes.

What we’re left with then is a movie that takes its sweet time to catch up to its audience, but does so with a bunch of contrived scenarios thrown together and interwoven with an (admittedly poignant and well-delivered) tale about domestic abuse and mental health.

The characters at least do well in their roles but The Calendar Killer’s story is your typical boilerplate thriller scenario. At the center of this is Klara, who’s going to die unless she kills her husband, Martin, instead. She awakens to find an ominous message scrawled on the wall confirming as much, and she hurriedly leaves the building for safe refuge.

You see, The Calendar Killer is on the loose again and after a string of unresolved murders, Klara’s life is firmly in the palm of this killer’s hands.

When Jules starts his night shift at a telephone safety helpline for lonely women on their way home, Klara manages to get through to him. As fate would have it, Jules soon becomes her last hope for survival and races against time to save her.

Along the way, the plot jumps back and forth between these two characters, and the opening scenes in particular are so poorly done. I understand that Director Adolfo Kolmerer intends to foreshadow events later on in the movie, but the camera lingers over crucial clues so much that you’ll almost immediately figure out what’s going on here.

With a thriller like this, it also doesn’t help that the ensemble is reduced to a handful of characters. This really limits down the number of potential killers we’re working with, and there aren’t anywhere near enough secondary characters in the background to make you guess and turn this into a proper whodunit.

Where the movie is a bit stronger however, is in the way it tackles themes of domestic violence, which it tackles in a pretty respectful way. The film clearly wants to show how deep-rooted abuse can be, and how damaging it can be to women in particular. This definitely shows in the way the film has been constructed and Luise Heyer in particular puts on an excellent performance as Klara.

Across the movie we do learn more about her backstory and what led Klara to this position, and in particular her conflicting ties with partner Martin. There are some pretty good quotes thrown in along the way, including Klara mentioning how “Hell is sometimes a disguised paradise”, which sums up moments from her own past in such a poetically tragic way. There are little moments like this dotted through the movie but unfortunately, nowhere near enough to pick this up from the middling mediocrity this seems content to indulge itself in.

The screenplay, at best, is cliched and tropey. At its worst, its pondering and predictable. There’s really not a whole lot here that the film does that helps it stand out, and even with its themes, the modern remake of The Invisible Man did a far better job of it than this. And that at least had a compelling mystery at its heart.

It’s a shame because The Calendar Killer definitely has potential. It’s not an awful film by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s also lacking in many areas. The acting is the one saving grace in this, but that’s not enough to save what’s otherwise a dated, predictable and unoriginal thriller.


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