"Circle" (2015) Let's Stand in a Circle And Talk About Our Feelings

The Trailer:

Director: Aaron Hann & Mario Miscione
Cast: Too many to name. So here's a link: IMDb Page For "Circle"
Synopsis: A group of fifty strangers find themselves in a strange room arranged in a circle. They soon realize that every two minutes a member of the group must die, and they are in charge of deciding who will be next.

At times I liked this movie, at other times I was annoyed. This is definitely an interesting premise, but it's been done before. Not necessarily in this fashion, but in some similar circumstance that forces a group of people to kill off others in order to survive. Despite the less-than-creative plot, I was intrigued enough to watch until the very end. Yet, I'm still on the fence about whether I like it or not.

Okay there are too many actors to even mention, so I won't go over each role and the actors ability to portray them. I will say that every actor did a good job at the task at hand, even if they were only on screen for a limited time. Well, there were a few flubs but they were killed off early on, so we didn't have to see too much of their sub-par acting. Sometimes, in films, having too many characters is annoying because we never get to know any of them personally and it gets frustrating trying to remember who is who, but here in Circle it works. The fact that there are so many people, most of whom never reveal their names, makes it easy to imagine being there with them, as though we are living in this nightmare too. What this film really comes down to is in dire circumstances which of the most basic human qualities will we choose: compassion or survival? Again, because of the nameless strangers, we aren't viewing any one particular group of people, we are viewing humanity in general, it's most raw form. We see our own judgments about others and how we determine what a worthy existence is, what the criteria someone must meet in order to be deemed deserving of a life. We are shown how, when liberated of our fear of potential consequences, we will carry out immoral actions. And it is a constant battle between doing what is right and doing what is going to keep you alive.

Equally as  it would be good to note that the directors and producers on this film were smart with their budget. Having the movie be filmed in a single location allowed them to divvy out the funds onto other things in order to add more quality to the overall product. The effects of the mysterious "killing machine" in the middle of the circle aren't overly dramatic, but interesting enough to get the point across that it may be some sort of extraterrestrial weapon. Additionally, because of the simplistic and minimal visual stimulation of the lone setting, we are forced to actually pay attention to the character's predicament. We are forced to stare into this mirror of sorts, that reflects back our worst, most instinctive qualities. It's a smart way to truly get under viewers skin and to make most of limited funds.

Now for the annoying bit. With the large amount of people in this group, there was very little distress and/or panic over what is happening. I mean, it took very little time for the people to assimilate to the situation and assess what their next move should be. The panic is delegated only to a few people who are killed off in the first few minutes, after that the frenzied panic that we'd expect of a situation like this has vanished. Next annoyance: the repetitiveness. Yes there is a system in place in the circle that every two minutes someone is killed, but after seeing about the fifth person it gets a tad annoying. And not only the formulaic killing, but the discussion is also quite repetitive. My satan, it's like beating a dead horse. Every time they start discussing, bickering, all-out yelling match, it is about the same thing: who deserves to live and who deserves to die. Though the metric of which they judge the worthiness of life is discussed through various lenses such as religion, economy, society, morality, ethically, etc., but in the end it's the same basic question. After a while it just feels like filler to prolong the running time. Then there's the ending. There is a lot of build up, but it never pays off and that makes me angry.

All in all, this isn't an entirely horrible film. On a scale of bad to good I'm leaning more towards the good side. It still has an interesting premise, albeit not very creative. The ending is a bit of a disappointment, but I can deal with it. I'm not angry that I watched it or anything and I would still recommend it to someone. Would I watch it again? Yeah.