Circle - Public speaking has never been this much fun (to watch!)

‘Circle.’ It’s a pretty tight little film, basically filmed only in the one location for an hour and a half – the location being a completely pitch black room with fifty red spots on the floor.  In each, stands a random stranger and every couple of minutes one of which gets zapped by – er – something and brutally killed before their body is dragged off into the gloom.  Confused?  How do you think the fifty people feel?!

And that’s that – fifty people turns to forty.  Forty turns to thirty and so on.  It’s a tough sell and it’s probably never going to be a mainstream hit (especially as about the most well-known face is Dexter’s wife from the TV series of the same name).  Anyway, I think it deserves a cult following as I’m sure it will find an audience out there somewhere.

Its simple premise and delivery kind of reminded me of other (rather fun films) such as The Human race and Cube.  Yes, it’s hardly action-packed.  The fifty people can’t even move off their little red spot on the floor – if they do, that nasty zapper comes back for them again and that’s that for them.  What you have is a kind of morality tale about what people would do in this situation.  Would they vote to kill people they don’t know just to save themselves, or would they try and save everyone?

It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.  I can see plenty of people finding it boring, or being annoyed at the ending (I won’t say why – you’ll have to check out the internet message boards!), but if you’re in the mood for something a little different and without any major car chases or Marvel superheroes destroying entire cities then give this one a go.  I found it on Netflix and was glad I did – definitely worth seeing if you’re in the mood for something dark, talky and that will make you question what you’d do in this most of weird and extreme of situations.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that