Netflix Pick – Circle
It’s time for your weekly Netflix Pick! This time of year is great for the critic favorite movies to start hitting the big screen in areas aside from New York City and Los Angeles. I’ve been consuming long running oscar contenders every night and loving it, but it was time for a change of pace. I was scouring Netflix for this week’s Pick and tried the inevitable few that I couldn’t get into when I found Circle. The cover art and concept were intriguing and with a non-intimidating run time of only 86 minutes I rolled the virtual dice and gave it a shot.
Tired of hearing your friends say they’ve watched everything on Netflix? Are you finding yourself saying that as well? Maybe the argument of people too cheap to shell out the 8 dollars are saying ‘there used to be good stuff, but it’s all crap now.’ Maybe you find yourself spending more time scrolling than watching. Well I plan to put those idiotic statements and bad behavior to rest. On a week to week basis I will give a solid recommendation or two on what you can sign on, turn on, and enjoy. I’ll try to stay away from the massive titles that everyone knows since those have been covered to exhaustion everywhere else. I’m looking for the hidden gems. The indies, the big name stars in direct to streaming endeavors that are well crafted and creative but wouldn’t gross the 300 million needed to justify a theatrical wide release.
Circle Poster
The Circle wastes no time getting to the meat of the story. The fifty chosen people are already standing in the circle. Every person stands on their own red circle in the circle. In front of them are arrows that point in at each person. Straight away some of the players start dropping dead. Moving out of their circle or interfering with the person next to them leads to instant death. The chosen people start to figure out the rules quickly and speculate on what it all means. Through some trial and error they realize that in the end only one of them is going to walk out. How do they decide? Is one life worth more than another? Should a mother get to leave? A child? A pregnant woman? Everyone has a theory and everyone else has a counter to it.
The Circle plays out like a classic Twilight Zone episode. The synopsis is intriguing and the movie does reasonable service to it. Seeing how quickly people turn on each other, the cunning some display, and the empathy so few seem to hold rings sadly true in a classic example of science fiction giving us an extreme version of our current culture. Deciding the elderly should be the first to go, the young should have a shot, those with dependents have more to lose than those without are all moral conundrums with real answers. Interesting points are raised but the full potential of the scenario is never fully explored in intellectual debates since the death machine in the middle of the room kills someone every two minutes.
For a movie with quite a large cast of actors sharing roughly equal screen time there aren’t really any standout performances. On the flip side there is only one actor who goes a bit over the top and chews up the well designed scenery. Julie Benz is the only recognizable name in the cast but she can’t honestly be considered the lead. There is no single lead. Ensemble casts are great to take a handful of decent actors and have everyone prop each other up, just look at the Fast and Furious franchise.
Without an outright glowing review you may be asking why Circle is the Netflix Pick for the week. The ambition of the project, intrigue, and fact that the movie is no more complicated than it needs to be make up for any shortcomings in the cast or philosophy. The shoestring budget for the film goes a long way, it never feels cheap, it never looks amatuer. The rules of Circle are established early on and never broken. The actors in the movie also serve as the audience’s collective mind. They try everything there is to try to figure the situation out.
The creativity and short runtime alone are why Circle is a nice change of pace and the Netflix Pick of the week. The fact that the movie is engaging is almost a bonus, but also makes it quite enjoyable.
