Synopsis:
Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione directed Circle (2015), which is a psychological science fiction thriller that fuses minimalistic filmmaking with an intricate story for a captivating and reflective experience. The film centers on a horrifying and lethal predicament: fifty strangers find themselves standing and waiting in a dark room that contains a mystery device in the center. All of them stand on two red circles that are divided into two concentric rings and impede their movement. Each of them is oddly clueless regarding their presence in the room, and every attempt at stepping off the circles results in instant death via an unseen force.
Eventually, the stakes come into focus. A mysterious machine at the center of the room kills one person every two minutes. They are selected through a voting method that participants quickly figure out. Each individual is allowed to vote discretely and covertly, and the individual who receives the highest votes is executed. Time does not stop, the timer continuously progresses. There is no escape. The participants face ludicrous moral dilemmas and conflict in order to decide who among them is doomed and who is granted the chance to survive.
While the movie progresses, the group focuses on ethics, social value, and plans for survival. Should the elderly be the first to be eliminated since they have already lived their lives? Should pregnant women be spared for the sake of future generations? What about the issue of whether criminals deserve to survive more than innocent people? Is saving the child more important than saving the adult? Such questions arise naturally through the heated dialogue and growing paranoia.
The characters begin to form bonds and strategies, deceive others, and expose their biases. Issues of race, gender, age, socio-economical standing, and morality come into play as the group gets smaller. Heightened tension arises when the remaining participants realize that to survive, reason and alliance building may not cut it, but deceit and cold-heartedness will.
What makes Circle particularly intense is the real time enactment of the film itself. The audience experiences a sensation of claustrophobia and existential dread. Physical violence is entirely absent, but the scarce deaths, while almost clinical, are instantaneous. Aside from Circle’s unique feature, the psychological struggles showcased are never-ending. Viewers are sucked into a game of psychology, forcing them to continuously internalize what decisions they would make under such circumstances.
In the most unsettling conclusion to the film, one man manages to work the entire room to his advantage by pretending to aid and assist others while eliminating them one by one. He survives by deceiving his last opponent, a pregnant woman, into believing that he plans to selflessly die for her instead. At the very last moment, he makes sure to kill her along with her unborn baby, becoming the only survivor of the ordeal. The film shifts to an ominous final scene showing the man standing alone in a desolate field watching as the remaining survivors from the other “circles” are released, posing unanswered troubling questions about humanity, ethics, and the morals of survival.
Circle does not focus on traditional character development with backstories and names but rather a large ensemble cast with relatively unknown but effective actors. However, every single one of them managed to capture their audience’s attention with a believable and intense performance portraying strong emotions commensurate to the dire situation.
As the man who emerges as the sole survivor, Carter Jenkins portrays the character with chilling realism. Jenkins gives an astonishingly subtle delivery filled performance filled with suspense as the supposedly moral figure turns out to be self-serving and ruthless.
Julie Benz – Plays a prominent role in the group who helps the ensemble with processing the voting system and has marked her presence in Dexter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Mercy Malick, Allegra Masters, Lawrence Kao, Cesar Garcia, and Michael Nardelli – These performers, along with others in the cast, shape a diverse group of characters, each one embodying a different societal construct and ethical stand.
Directors:
Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione. In addition to co-directing the movie, the two also shared writing responsibilities. Their experience developing the web series The Vault prepared them for Circle’s budgetary storytelling challenges with its high-concept narrative and advanced techniques. In Circle, the lack of change in setting, spectacles, and traditional action creates dramatic and moral conflict for the story to take the spotlight.
Cinematography and Production Design:
The sparse set design significantly elevates the film’s impact. The entirety of the movie is set in a single room containing a dimly lit circular floor with a strange device in the center. The camera work places great emphasis on capturing faces and cutting to different angles of the same scene in order to enhance emotional stress. The production design captures the essence of a psychological test or some alien surveillance, with the origins of the fatal situation remaining ambiguous—possibly alien or some form of AI.
IMDb Ratings:
Circle has an IMDb score of 6.0 out of 10. While the score can be considered underwhelming for a blockbuster, it appears to have been generally well received particularly by lovers of moralistic thrillers and dramatic stories. Both critics and audiences have lauded the film for its captivating storyline, for its fascinating premise of placing characters in a single room with dialogue while still managing to maintain suspense, and for the incredible pacing the film had.
The film has been placed side by side with other modern minimalist thrillers like Cube (1997), Exam (2009), and even the classic 12 Angry Men (1957) due to its focus on human nature under stress. The film has received praise for addressing societal problems through its voting system, creating a micro society under severe psychological stress.
Some reviewers commented that Circle comes across as nihilistic and overly preachy; others felt the characters sometimes resemble archetypes more than nuanced people. Nevertheless, the film succeeds in provoking profound emotional and intellectual responses given its limited time and resources.
Conclusion:
Circle (2015) is a morally complex psychological thriller that captivates the viewers with unflinching scrutiny on their values, biases, and primal survival instincts. It does not rely on elaborate storytelling and spectacles; rather, it focuses on the manipulation of human choices in life and death situations.
Circle works both as a speculative piece of fiction and as a social commentary thanks to powerful performances, a captivating script, and a chillingly vague conclusion. It is not a movie for everyone; its oppressive tone and absence of resolution can feel jarring, yet those with an appetite for intellectually stimulating, debate-inspiring cinema will find Circle astounding and deeply haunting.
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