Sin, Forensics, and the Catholic Guilt Trip of the Year
If Smaller and Smaller Circles were a person, it’d be that one Jesuit professor who terrifies you with his intellect, heals your soul with empathy, and then gently reminds you that life, like Payatas, is just a mountain of garbage occasionally hiding something sacred.
Raya Martin’s 2017 adaptation of F. H. Batacan’s acclaimed novel is a small miracle: a cerebral crime thriller that manages to be deeply Filipino without resorting to cheap melodrama or jump scares. It’s dark, thoughtful, and — God help us — funny in the most horrifying ways.
This isn’t your usual popcorn horror about ghosts in white dresses or curses passed through Wi-Fi. No, Smaller and Smaller Circles gives you something far scarier: systemic corruption, spiritual rot, and priests who actually do their jobs.
The Plot: CSI: Vatican Edition
Set in 1997, before smartphones, Twitter outrage, and widespread cynicism were cool, the story follows Jesuit priests Gus Saenz (Nonie Buencamino) and Jerome Lucero (Sid Lucero) — part forensic investigators, part moral janitors — as they investigate the murders of several boys found mutilated in the Payatas dumpsite. The victims’ faces, hearts, and genitals have been surgically removed — because if there’s one thing this movie doesn’t do, it’s subtlety.
The Church, the NBI, and a bunch of bureaucrats get involved, which means the investigation moves at the pace of a Sunday sermon. Enter journalists, corrupt officials, and an opera scene so tense it could make Phantom of the Opera look like karaoke night.
Eventually, the case leads to Dr. Alex Carlos (Jun-jun Quintana), a dentist — because of course it’s a dentist — whose precision with a scalpel mirrors the surgical way the film dissects Philippine society: with uncomfortable accuracy and zero anesthesia.
When Gus and Jerome finally confront Alex, things don’t end with a heroic showdown. Instead, we get self-mutilation, priestly trauma, and an ending so bleak it could be mistaken for a government report.
Characters: Two Priests Walk into a Crime Scene
Let’s start with Father Gus Saenz. Nonie Buencamino delivers a performance so controlled it’s practically a masterclass in Jesuit stoicism. He’s the kind of priest who can talk about God one minute and bodily decomposition the next, without flinching or losing his lunch. Gus isn’t your stereotypical cinematic cleric. He’s a weary intellectual — a man who believes in both divine justice and DNA evidence.
Then there’s Sid Lucero’s Father Jerome — younger, angrier, and perpetually one sermon away from a breakdown. He’s Gus’s student, sidekick, and moral conscience rolled into one caffeinated Jesuit burrito. Together, they’re the unlikeliest of buddy-cop duos: imagine Lethal Weapon, but with cassocks, microscopes, and an existential crisis every ten minutes.
Carla Humphries shines as Joanna Bonifacio, a journalist who does what journalists do best — ask inconvenient questions, wear sensible shoes, and get stonewalled by the patriarchy. She’s the audience’s anchor to the madness: smart, skeptical, and possibly the only person in the film who gets a full night’s sleep.
Meanwhile, Ricky Davao plays Cardinal Meneses, the kind of high-ranking church official who smiles warmly while metaphorically strangling you with incense smoke. Christopher de Leon and Bembol Roco represent the NBI’s eternal struggle between competence and politics, while Tessie Tomas and Gladys Reyes appear as society’s high-class gatekeepers — proof that evil wears perfume and votes well.
And then there’s Dr. Alex Carlos, our killer. Jun-jun Quintana plays him not as a monster, but as a man molded by trauma, guilt, and Catholic shame. He’s horrifying precisely because he’s so human — a walking, bleeding case study in how institutional abuse and silence breed real-world horror.
Tone: A Murder Mystery Wrapped in a Sermon, Dipped in Irony
Smaller and Smaller Circles is grim, but not hopeless. It’s what happens when an autopsy meets a homily. Every frame feels deliberate, every line soaked in subtext. This isn’t horror that startles — it festers.
Yet for all its darkness, there’s a surprising amount of wit. The dialogue crackles with dry humor, especially between Gus and Jerome. They bicker about everything from bureaucracy to biblical ethics, like two saints who’ve read too much Freud.
When Gus scolds the Church hierarchy, it’s not the fiery rage of a Hollywood priest with a shotgun. It’s the quiet disappointment of a father whose son just joined a pyramid scheme. The horror here isn’t supernatural — it’s systemic. The evil isn’t hiding under the bed; it’s in the boardroom, the parish office, and the mirror.
Direction: The Gospel According to Raya Martin
Director Raya Martin handles the material with surgical calm — fitting, given the subject matter. His camera lingers on faces, garbage piles, and church halls long enough to make you feel the stench of both literal and moral decay.
He uses the Payatas dumpsite not just as a setting, but as a metaphor: mountains of waste concealing buried sins. The color palette oscillates between sepia nostalgia and funereal gray, as if the film itself were rotting in real time.
Martin doesn’t flinch from showing violence, but he never indulges in it. There’s no shock-for-shock’s-sake here. Every cut, every corpse, every drop of blood means something.
And the pacing — oh, the pacing. It’s deliberate, almost meditative, like a Mass for the Dead where the homily’s actually worth listening to.
Themes: Sin, Science, and the Politics of Silence
The film isn’t just a murder mystery; it’s a morality play for modern Manila. It tackles institutional rot — the Church’s cover-ups, the government’s apathy, and society’s collective shrug toward the poor. It asks hard questions: What happens when faith meets forensics? When compassion meets corruption? When priests do what cops won’t?
And it does all this without screaming at you. The film trusts its audience to think — which, in horror cinema, is almost a revolutionary act.
Dr. Alex Carlos isn’t just a killer; he’s a symptom. A product of childhood abuse, social neglect, and moral hypocrisy. The movie doesn’t excuse him, but it forces us to look at the machinery that made him. It’s less “whodunit” and more “why do we keep letting this happen?”
Performances: Saints, Sinners, and the Soul of a Nation
Nonie Buencamino’s performance as Father Saenz is a revelation. He brings a weary compassion to the role, like a man who’s seen too much death to fear it anymore. Sid Lucero matches him with raw, restless energy — the cynicism of youth colliding with the resignation of age.
Their chemistry is the film’s backbone. Together, they turn investigative procedure into moral poetry.
Carla Humphries gives Joanna enough fire to cut through the film’s despair, while Jun-jun Quintana’s killer is all quiet menace and wounded humanity. Even the bit parts — from Tessie Tomas’s socialite to Bembol Roco’s grizzled official — feel lived-in and painfully real.
And Joy Viado, in her final film appearance, brings warmth and levity to a story that sorely needs it. It’s a bittersweet reminder that even in the darkest corners, humor and humanity persist.
Final Thoughts: The Lord’s Work, But With Autopsies
Smaller and Smaller Circles isn’t an easy film to watch, but it’s one worth witnessing — like a confession you didn’t know you needed. It’s smart, unflinching, and deeply Filipino, blending horror, crime, and social critique with the precision of a scalpel and the empathy of a prayer.
If there’s divine justice in cinema, this film deserves sainthood. It dares to say what the pulpit won’t: that faith without accountability is just theater, and redemption without truth is a lie.
It’s not just a murder mystery. It’s an exorcism — not of demons, but of the rot we choose not to see.
Final Rating: ★★★★★
(Five out of five holy scalpels — a crime drama so sharp it could cut through corruption, conscience, and cassocks alike.)
