By Franz
Well it’s October and Halloween is right around the corner, so I’ve been trying to watch more horror films than usual. Okay, I haven’t seen a lot, but goddamned I’m trying! I’ll try to find the time to keep this shit going for the rest of the month, but if you know our blog(s) well enough, you know we ain’t making promises. Anyways, today I’ll review two and a half films: Circle (2015), a gimmicky indie scifi thriller, Lady in the Water, a film so terrible it made me want to punch someone in the face and I’m maybe going to touch another Smalyanana film, Signs. Well, not time to waste, let’s get to it:
Circle
By far the most interesting of the bunch is Aaron Hann’s and Mario Miscione’s Circle. Like I said, it’s a scifi thriller/horror about a group of people in a circle and every minute (or two minutes?) a person dies. Basically they all have their small space where they can’t leave, if they do, a mysterious force kills them. But they quickly learn they can vote who dies next. I realize this sounds not only confusing, but stupid and it is, but it’s not as confusing as you might think. They do a decent job setting it up, even though they never explain how they can vote, like do the aliens read their minds or something? I mean, I guess so, it’s kinda weird that they never explain it, I hoped for something, but hey, movie logic right?
This starts people. I would name who, but I have no idea who they were. One of the ladies looked like she was on Downton Abbey. That’s it. The human beings in this film play the most stereotypical and at times racially offensive characters who argue about who should die and have the most pretentious and tedious “philosophical” conversations about race and religion, among other fun topics. Honestly, that’s the problem of the film, it feels like it was written by a nineteen year old college douche who thinks he’s being so smart by having characters talk about heated topics. But it comes off as uninspired and highly unoriginal. Especially the discussion of race, was especially painful, it said absolutely nothing new about anything, it clearly tried, but the writer wasn’t witty or intelligent enough to bring anything new to a very interesting topic. Sadly. Because this has potential to be an interesting movie about the human nature not only by the moral choice of choosing who dies but also how, even in a situation like that, we would still argue about race. However, the film is never that witty.
And also the characters are stereotypes to the max, I’m not sure was it intentional, if it was, they do nothing with that and it wouldn’t make sense, because the stereotypes are so outrageous and hammy, it destroys any kind of message you had about the human nature, because nobody is like these people. And if it wasn’t intentional, well then you’re a cunt. I’m sorry, but the republican, conservative man so over-the-top it made no sense to have him like that. I mean, who, since the 80’s, has dressed like that? Even the republicans aren’t as evil as that man was. But I’m guessing it was intentional, which furthermore hurts the films message.
But there are positives, some of the actors did a fine job, especially the married couple, they were fine. And the teenage kid, he was fine. And the ending, not the last scene, but the scene right before that was surprising and the only time I felt like they did something interesting with the gimmick. Also, it’s somewhat decently shot, I would have wished it was more interesting visually, but what we got, was fine. I’m actually recommending this, not because of things I just said, but because of one reason, which is an important one: it’s incredibly entertaining. I’m amazed how they made a concept like this, even though how pretentious and tedious it is, so goddamn entertaining. I, at no point, was yawning or looking at the watch, for some reason this was fascinating. So, that’s why you should maybe check it out.
But that doesn’t excuse a shitty fucking script, 3/10
Lady in the Water
Since everybody has already thrashed this film, this won’t be too long. I’m going to be talking about the positives, negatives and the “point where it made me want to punch someone” and then, of course, overall. Since I’m such a positive person, we’ll start with the good things:
Good things
Christopher Doyle’s cinematography.
Seahorse Mafia of Films and Music 