Welcome to Hell’s Group Therapy Session
If 12 Angry Men explored the moral complexities of justice, Circle explores what would happen if 12 Angry Men were multiplied by four, dropped into a dark room, and forced to vote each other to death while arguing about social issues like a really bad Reddit thread.
Directed by Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione, this 2015 “science fiction psychological thriller” takes place entirely in one room and stars fifty people you won’t remember five minutes after the credits roll. The setup? Fifty strangers wake up standing in circles, learn that one of them dies every two minutes, and realize they can decide who goes next. It’s part social experiment, part alien abduction, and entirely a waste of your brain cells.
If Sartre’s No Exit was a bleak meditation on human nature, Circle is that same concept rewritten by a college freshman who just discovered “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” and thinks they’re the next Black Mirror writer.
Fifty People, Zero Personality
The film starts strong enough: people wake up in a mysterious chamber, confused, panicking, and probably regretting their agent’s phone call. The camera pans around to show an assortment of stereotypes—an old man, a soldier, a cop, a lesbian, a pregnant woman, a racist, a lawyer, a guy in a hoodie who definitely says “bro” too much.
Every single one of them talks. Constantly. It’s like being trapped in an escape room where everyone’s favorite hobby is moralizing at gunpoint. Within ten minutes, you’ll be praying for the alien death beam to put you out of your misery.
And that’s before you realize the movie’s main character isn’t a person—it’s the vote. Every two minutes, the glowing floor lights up like an evil Simon Says, and someone’s vaporized for having the wrong opinions about race, class, or reproductive rights.
It’s supposed to be thought-provoking, but mostly it feels like The View meets Saw on a shoestring budget.
The Dialogue: TED Talk Apocalypse
Circle doesn’t have conversations so much as it has improv debates about ethics. Every line sounds like it was written by ChatGPT trained on undergraduate philosophy essays.
Here’s how most of the dialogue goes:
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“You can’t just kill the old people!”
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“They’ve lived their lives! Let the young survive!”
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“That’s ageist!”
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“You’re racist!”
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“Aliens are watching!”
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“We’re all equal!”
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Zap.
Repeat this cycle about forty-five times, sprinkle in a few monologues about morality, and congratulations—you’ve just experienced the cinematic equivalent of Thanksgiving dinner on acid.
By the halfway mark, you start rooting for the alien laser just to cut through the noise. The movie thinks it’s dissecting human prejudice and tribalism, but it’s really just showing how many clichés can fit into 87 minutes.
Eric, the Marine, and the Pregnant Woman: Morality’s Least Interesting Love Triangle
Eventually, amidst the chaos, the film pretends to have protagonists. There’s Eric (Michael Nardelli), a “nice guy” who spends most of the film looking morally conflicted; the Marine, who’s every “honorable soldier” stereotype rolled into one jawline; and the Pregnant Woman (Allegra Masters), who is exactly that—pregnant and one-dimensional.
Eric leads a group that decides they should all die to save the pregnant woman and a little girl. It’s a touching idea—until Eric immediately betrays it in the final seconds. Apparently, self-sacrifice only lasts until someone else’s heartbeat counts as a tie-breaker.
The twist ending, in which Eric kills everyone (including the unborn baby), isn’t clever. It’s just bleak nihilism dressed up as profundity. It’s the cinematic equivalent of your edgy cousin saying, “Humans are the real monsters” while wearing a trench coat at Starbucks.
The Room: IKEA Death Chamber
Since the entire movie takes place in one room, you’d expect the filmmakers to at least make that room interesting. Spoiler: they didn’t. The set looks like a cross between a minimalist art installation and an Apple Store waiting area.
Fifty people stand on red circles around a glowing black dome in the center, occasionally zapped by a lightning effect that looks suspiciously like it was rendered on a 2009 Dell laptop. The color palette is “depression gray,” and the cinematography gives you the distinct feeling that you’ve just wandered into a malfunctioning screensaver.
You’d think a movie this minimal could at least be tense, but no—every death feels like a PowerPoint transition.
Fifty Angry Stereotypes
What 12 Angry Men accomplished with twelve well-developed characters, Circle attempts with fifty cardboard cutouts. There’s the racist cop, the homophobic lawyer, the cancer survivor, the foreign woman, the lesbian, the immigrant, the rich guy, and about forty-three other social issues awkwardly crammed into human form.
Each exists solely to argue one point before being zapped. It’s like a diversity seminar gone horribly wrong.
And when the film inevitably devolves into people killing each other based on identity politics, you can practically feel the writers patting themselves on the back. “We’ve made a statement about society!” they whisper proudly, as the audience stares blankly and wonders what’s for dinner.
The Message: Humanity Is Trash (Groundbreaking!)
Circle desperately wants to say something deep about human nature. Unfortunately, what it ends up saying is: “People suck, and aliens know it.” The characters’ moral posturing and betrayals are supposed to reveal our innate selfishness—but it’s hard to care when everyone sounds like they’re competing for the “Most Condescending Think Piece” award.
The film thinks it’s making us question our values. In reality, it’s just making us question why we didn’t rewatch Cubeinstead.
By the end, when Eric outsmarts a pregnant woman and a child to secure his own survival, the movie mistakes shock for insight. It’s the kind of twist that feels less like a gut punch and more like a middle schooler writing “THE END… OR IS IT?” on their first short story.
The Ending: Aliens and Apathy
After the moral carnage is over, Eric wakes up outside, surrounded by other survivors, as UFOs loom overhead. It’s supposed to be a haunting revelation—a peek into a larger world where humanity’s worst tendencies have been tested by an alien intelligence.
Instead, it feels like the movie’s saying, “We ran out of ideas. Look! Aliens!”
Nothing is explained, no questions are answered, and you’re left wondering if the real twist is that you just spent an hour and a half watching a glorified group project about ethics.
The Pacing: Death by Talking
It’s impressive that a movie where someone dies every two minutes can still feel like it’s three hours long. The repetitive structure—argument, vote, zap, repeat—makes time crawl slower than the film’s budget.
Each new death should raise the stakes, but the opposite happens. You stop caring who dies because everyone’s equally unbearable. By the final ten, you’re just hoping the aliens come back and vaporize the entire cast for good measure.
Final Verdict: Fifty People Enter, Nobody Wins
Circle wants to be an intellectual thriller about morality under pressure. What it actually is, is a social experiment in audience endurance. It’s not scary, it’s not clever, and it’s definitely not deep.
Yes, it’s mildly ambitious for a low-budget sci-fi film, but ambition without execution is just hubris with a light show.
The next time you feel trapped in a boring meeting where everyone’s arguing, remember—it could be worse. You could be watching Circle.
Final Score: 3/10
A philosophical horror film for people who think “What if everyone just sucks?” counts as a profound question. Like 12 Angry Men—if all twelve were insufferable, and one of them was an alien PowerPoint.
