Circle (2015)★★★★☆

This is an interesting movie. The storyline is compelling and ultimately relatable – it’s easy to start wondering what you would do if you woke up in a similar situation. And once that happens, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the choices others make.

I like Julie Benz, the only one of the group I recognized, but she doesn’t get much screen time until towards the end of the movie. The rest of the acting is mostly fine, although there were several instances of overacting throughout. The background music is mostly subtle, and since the circle has its own sound effects, largely unnecessary.

(Spoilers ahead) Once you understand how the circle works, the tension starts mounting as people keep dropping. But it’s a finite amount of tension because there’s a finite number of people in that room. So the ending has to be pretty good to release all of that tension.

And to be honest, I’m not sure that it is. It’s not a bad ending, I suppose. It fits the rest of the movie. But somehow I don’t feel satisfied afterwards. Maybe that’s the point? The real message of the movie? It leaves me with an unclear impression of how I feel about the film.

But I liked the rest of the movie so much. It’s pretty creepy, in that things are happening pretty quickly and there’s no real understanding of why or how. And when the bodies get dragged off screen by the glowing hands? Super creepy. And anything that has a chance to haunt me for a few nights (at least) is pretty good in my book. So I still rate it at 4 out of 5.