User Reviews

Great concept, great idea of how to use a low budget film. However, after watching the whole thing you wish you didn't see the ending.

The ending made no sense, and had no real explanations that were clear. Very rushed towards the end.

As a whole, I would say 3/4 of the movie was good. However does lose momentum as the movie continues.

After reading the synopsis of this film prior to viewing it I thought "Aha! This will suit my penchant for sadistic thrillers." I was hoping for something similar to Cube and instead got a feature length study of human nature. This was fine. What was not fine was the so-so delivery of such an exciting premise. It was messy and just seemed to miss some key element. For a movie that was so dialogue heavy it was disappointing to have it not delve a little deeper. Also the voting system was a little confusing and haphazard which made the whole thing seem a little sluggish, rather than clean and fast paced. Despite these flaws, Circle did manage to hold my attention quite well and had me engaged with the characters at points, as each stereotype of society is represented and played with, however fleetingly. The plot twist at the end was not entirely shocking as it summed up the true nature of most humans quite accurately. I believe the crushing sense of disappointment I experienced after watching this film was at least partially intentional, and for that I give it credit.

Just finished watching this enjoyable indie film, which is somewhere between an episode of The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror.

50 people trapped in a room who quickly come to realise that they have to vote who will die next, each death at 2-minute intervals.

What we see is the obvious discussions and arguments regarding race, sexuality, who has lived the most valid life, should the oldest be first, etc. ... anything that can be argued to be a black mark against somebody who isn't you, so that they you have a reason for them to be the next victim (and you to live).

The film moves along at a good pace, it never felt like it was dragging.

I found the acting to be pretty good and the twist at the end was a surprise.

Well worth a viewing in my humble opinion.

In my opinion, this movie wasnt great at all. Theres no backstory of how they ended up in the circle, no explaining of how it all was made up. In 1 hour and 27 minutes they just stand around the circle and just talk why they should survive, and every two miutes it comes an irritating sound that makes me wanna throw up, and then someone dies. Its not interesting and it doesnt make wanna keep looking. I would say that i wasted my time by looking at this movie.

Fifty people wake up in a room, trapped standing on circles on the ground while an orb picks them off one by one. Soon they realize that they can vote for who dies next and a vicious power struggle for survival takes place in which only one person can come out alive, if anyone makes it out at all.

At first glance this film seems like pretty typical Saw-esque horror fare, characters drop one by one as they try to solve their predicament in seemingly logical and ethical ways. But where a lot of those films suffer from 'torture porn' syndrome, IE making entertainment out of cruel and inhuman grotesqueries and human suffering, Circle probes a little bit deeper and doesn't make the constant deaths, though occasionally amusing, the focal point of interest. The deaths are all clean and it never becomes sadistic or sickening, which I appreciate. I think that this film has a lot to say and it gets its points across in a mind-blowing fashion in my opinion. Once the characters figure out what is going on in the room, they all try different tactics to stay alive and to present their ethical ideas to the rest of the group. Prejudices emerge. They could easily feel clichéd but they don't, and one reason for this is that the film feels allegorical in its denouement. It would seem unlikely that so many people from seemingly every different walk of life would wind up in that room together, but it's important to the point that I think the film is trying to make. I think that every moral and ethical idea presented is relevant and all of the characters add something new to the 'idea' of the film. As political sides emerge and different viewpoints clash, it becomes clear that this group of people is sort of like a microcosm of our modern world. It becomes a study in sociology, psychology, morality and Darwinism. Human beings tend to hold their hatred for each other inside and never let others see it. But when life and death are at stake, when everyone's back is against the wall, and when the power to kill another to save yourself is as easy as closing one's fist, how would people really react? I think it's realistic in it's portrayal of seemingly good people turning on each other. Granted it's not totally nihilistic. A lot of them want someone to survive at the end who deserves it, but the group spends so much time bickering and arguing with each other, killing each other through frustration and anger, and even through strategy in trying to survive that they end up wiping out most of the best people early on. Human beings are traded like pawns in a game as strategies come head to head. And in the end, who walks away the winner out of all of the chaos that we humans put ourselves and each other through with our endless judgments of each other and our pointless struggle to the top of the food chain?

HERE BE SPOILERS

The psychopath. The manipulator. The deceiver. The smartest and least ethically bound out of all of them takes the grand prize. If this isn't a metaphor for the elite in our society then I don't know what is. He pretends to be on the side of the weakest in the room, promising to sacrifice himself for them if one of them can do the same. But then he turns on them, survival instincts kicking in. How many people would have done the same in his position? Way too many in this world. His victory totally negates the sacrifices of all of those who came before him, because it's totally unethical. But it makes the movie as a whole mean so much more because of that negation.

But going back to one of the main themes of the movie, is it really our place to judge him? As he stands amidst a group of survivors, we see that they are mostly children and pregnant women. If the aliens are trying to purify the world down to 2 percent of our current population, wouldn't the new world need some strong, smart people to lead the needy and the weak? It really makes you think. And that's why I think this film is great. It makes you think not only about society and the dilemmas humans face as a whole but it asks you to take a look at your own judgements and values and ask whether or not they are really what is best for others and for society. Personally I do think Eric is evil though. We're all faced with the eventuality of our own death, maybe all we can do is live truly good lives and hope that the world that is left after we are gone is a better one. But we need to watch out for those manipulators and evildoers at the top of the pile or they will take everything we've struggled for centuries to achieve.

Overall this is a very disturbing film, but a poignant one. It brings up a lot of interesting questions about human nature and provides no easy answers. This is a bold film, a challenging film, and a film not for everyone, but if you can stomach the subject matter I highly recommend it.

I will say this movie pulls no punches and goes in a very crude direction. I guess it's the directors interpretation of humanity, motives and realism. What arsenals with mind games human beings will use in order to survive. Of how in the real world, what people usually ends up winning in the end. Well at least in this world we are living in currently. So yeah, this movie might leave a bad aftertaste for some viewers. Actually probably many viewers, especially with the ending and all. It's something no Hollywood movie with a big budget would try to tackle. So I give the filmmakers props for going in a gutsy direction with it all. However this film tries to go in a direction that tries to destroy all hope for humanity. Like I said the ending is a realistic portrayal of what would go down from a nihilist perspective. To be honest I think this movie is probably the most nihilistic and skeptical movie I have ever seen. So I suggest that if you are dealing with depression to stay far away from this one. To sum up this setting overall, it's like some sort of evil and vile game that the Joker would play to bring out the true colors of humanity.

7.3/10

I mean, the plot is somewhat predictable until like 5 minutes before the movie ends and we get a "twist". But not only the twist is not even a big one, they explain nothing whatsoever than....the obvious. If you have 1hr and a half to kill, what's it.

It's a surprisingly nicely done psycho-thriller, much like the movie Cube, only without all the Saw-type booby traps and gore. There were a few holes and flaws in the characters thinking (i.e. how did the "couple" manage to hatch a plan to lie about being married so fast without anyone hearing them, what did the girl whisper to the Latino man who didn't speak English just before she was eliminated, and once they realized they had a minister in the room, why didn't they vote him off? After all, if he believes, then he has the least to fear of all of them). I really liked how I thought it was going to end, and actually felt myself tearing up a bit that this little girl was going to sacrifice herself, only to have that ruined with the guy tricking them. Then, it just turned into a typical forced ending of ambiguity. And, of course, the young white guy is the survivor. Not only did this movie lose me at the end, they also lose serious creativity points. The ending made no sense, and brought zero closure to the whole thing. I personally would have liked to seen an ending more along the lines of the last guy is the "winner", but the prize is that he gets to be a guinea pig for the aliens, while we see the others who were "eliminated" waking up together back on Earth, realizing that they actually "won". But, that's just a thought. It was an enjoyable film, just went into the ravine at the end.

I tried to get into this movie, and by the time it was over, I realized I had wasted an hour and a half of my life. The only reason I stayed with it was because it reminded me of 2010's NINE DEAD, a far better movie.

CIRCLE tells the story of a group of strangers who wake up inside a darkened room, all standing in lit red circles placed in a larger circle in a few rows so that everyone can see and hear each other. A mysterious orb in the middle of the room starts killing each of them off one by one, seemingly without any rhyme or reason. The characters begin trying to figure out how the killing process works, and surmise that the orb kills off another person every two minutes, and that the survivors have the collective ability to vote for the person who will be next. They also discover that death befalls anyone who leaves the lit circle in which they are standing, as does having physical contact with anyone standing near them.

The group spends a little time trying to figure out how they all got there, and to see if they have any ties to anyone else in the room. Not enough time is spent on this investigative process and the uncovering of the layers that might keep the audience interested. Instead the generic conclusion is that a giant ship from outer space reached down and grabbed each of them and brought them to the ship and placed them in captivity. The group then exercises flawed reasoning as to who should be killed next, whether it be determined by age, race, or socioeconomic standing.

The screenwriters tried to portray the group as a random cross section of people: The young, the old, people of different races and occupations. The story then unfortunately takes too many pot shots at stereotypes, particularly conservative ones. For example, the one police officer in the group is labeled judgmental for pointing out the one criminal in the group, and the one the white collar worker wearing a tie and suspenders (a white male, of course) is branded as a racist for his words to a black man in the group. And the stereotyping wouldn't be complete without the same white male devaluing the lesbian mother's life and worth. Even the one minister in the group is scoffed at for suggesting that God is the answer, while the continued elimination of people in the group suggest that God is nowhere to be found. And the lone soldier in the group is accused of having information about the spaceship that he was keeping from the rest of the group.

As the herd thins out, the remaining survivors deduce a convoluted idea that with enough votes in one direction, the young girl and pregnant lady in the group can be spared death. How the script got to this point is fuzzy, and the story was already too far gone for the audience to care if anyone survived.

In the end, the lone survivor is seen on the ground outside the ship, with onlookers gathered to watch the ship leaving the skies above the earth. No further explanation is given, and whatever attempt at a bombshell explanation that is given by the survivor's narration at the end of the movie was ineffective. I finished this movie feeling cheated and empty, like I had been lectured to.

Circle is a thought provoking movie that is definitely not worth a 9/10. So why then did I give it just that?

For reasons that I don't fully understand, I find myself mesmerized by the end of an hour and a half long serial execution by jury. This style of movie has been attempted multiple times before with the likes of Cube, Saw, and a couple underground indie flicks, where in the premise, at it's basis is kill or be killed. Though surprisingly none others quite matched up to the tone and imaginative nature of Circle.

Let me try to explain in more detail and I emphasize try:

Circle is a very simplistic movie where 50 people are trapped in a circle (thought to be trapped by E.T's), a circle that forces the unlucky individuals to choose who to kill in 2 minute intervals. Where it gets interesting is the evolution of everyones mindset on how to go about killing each other. The psychology used, the ruthlessness at the core of seemingly everyday people, the innocence, the betrayal, the discrimination, and the humanity in others is what is so mesmerizing about this indie. It is a lower budget, decent acted psychological thriller that educes the imagination in so many ways. With a semi intriguing simplistic idea, they were able to create an entertaining thought provoking humanistic experiment, simply with dialogue, and a Circle.

I give this movie a 9/10 for the simple fact that there is nothing else quite like it. And whatever is quite like it, still isn't quite like it. In general movie terms, I wouldn't dream of rating this movie higher than a 6/10. However, when you walk away satisfied yet still wanting more, disgusted yet applauding, and tired yet contemplative, I have no choice but to stick with my rating.

No matter what society we live in or what culture we came from we are making decisions that seem small but are affecting the lives of others, we are different and separated because of culture, race, religion, income, sex orientation... but at the same time we are the same: we all want to live, this is what this movie is about.

When it comes to political decisions and who deserves to live or must most profit from resources the question gets complicated, this movie tries the clarify some of the motivations groups of humans have to reject the other and how these motivations only make sense in the heads of people who have them, in nature things are different and it is shown in the ending that the one who gets to live have done that by a mix of intelligence and luck.

This movie is more about political science and sociology than science fiction or horror.

It holds you, pulls you into it and has you rooting for people. The problem was simple, to be honest. The ending was so flaccid, based on the build up, it leaves you thinking "Come on.." I was surprised , based on how the film ended, at the level of acting in this movie.That was the shining point when you factor in the ending or the lack of context and content. It was nice to see "Rita" after her demise in Dexter, finding a roll and playing it well :) If it had a bit more context, content or a bit more story, I think it would have been a terrific movie. Instead it went down the pseudo- cerebral path and fell on it's face. I Would not recommend this to anyone unless it was a .99 rental at a red-box simply because it is missing the delivery that comes after the build up

The first half is pretty much bland, kind of rushed and a litle bit messy. Still fairly entertaining though.

The second half on the other hand was for me, pretty phenomenal. Dialogues and interactions got way better and more interesting and the tension was more noticeble and better constructed. There were a few "plot twists" that I didn't see coming like the married couple one, which I found really interesting. And the final kill where the last guy tricked the litle girl and the pregnant woman was fairly well done, I could see it but it was not so obvious, it was decently built up as a final litle plot twist to truly represent human nature, which is pretty much was this movie is about.

However, for a movie with that theme and that happened all in one room without moving, it really lacked depth in the dialogues, especially in the first half which is pretty lackluster as I said before.

The end was meh, I didn't like it at all. I would've rather that the guy just went out and we didn't see anything else, for it to be more ambiguous or even that at the end, he died too, as a consequence of selfishness and part of the message of the movie as a whole.

I also really liked how it was capable of building tension without anyone touching or getting near to each other at all. You felt that they wanted to punch each other to death but they couldn't move so that tension had to be built up by pure dialogue and acting, in which to me, they suceeded for the most part.

Concluding, the end was lackluster, the first half was not really great and as a whole, for the main theme, the movie lacked depth and meaning. However, it is entertaining(though a lot of people might said it's boring), the acting is overall decent and they built the atmosphere well, and the second half is truly remarkable to me, so It's a fine movie overall. I'll give it a 7 which I think it's kind of generous to be honest. Let's say it's 6. something