FILM REVIEW – WELCOME TO THE CIRCLE

Welcome to the Circle is a disappointment, especially after it had such a promising start. David Fowler clearly knows how to direct as he drums up tension well and is a dab hand at hiding the limitations of budget. It’s just such a shame that it’s wasted on a story that takes pride in making no sense at all while trying to convince us that that’s because it’s actually, like, totally deep and meaningful, man. It feels like Fowler watched The Endless and said ‘Pfft, I can do that’ but didn’t understand any of the real human mechanisms behind why that film works so well.

From the satanic panic of 80’s suburbia to the more tragic real life events of Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate, cults hold a strange fascination for many of us. A charismatic leader preying on the vulnerable, placing himself in a position of absolute power over them, isolating them from their families and the ‘real world’.

Perfect fodder for a horror film!

Welcome to the Circle is the horror debut of writer/director David Fowler, who until now has mostly made… er… wildlife documentary features. For Disney. Normally when a filmmaker jumps straight into horror features without dabbling in shorts it sets off my alarm bells, but in this case the trailer intrigued me; it had a compelling premise and some shots that promised creepiness to come. So I figured I’d give it a shot.

It starts very strongly. We meet Greg (Matthew MacCaul) and his young daughter Samantha (Taylor Dianne Robinson) on a camping trip. A midnight mauling from a bear sees them rescued by the members of The Circle, a tiny mysterious cult who live alone in the woods. At first it all seems very hippy-dippy, with cult members greeting their guests with ‘Love and Blessings’ and taking pictures for their ‘healing wall’. But it quickly becomes apparent that all is not as it appears, and everything takes a turn for the sinister. Can he and Samantha make it out alive?

The first third of the film makes for great viewing – apart from the breakfast scene, which is almost unbearable; more on that in a moment. Fowler’s clearly got a good eye for how to convey a potentially expensive set-piece (say, a bear attack) on a budget without it coming across as hilariously naff (sharp chaotic edits, suggestive sound). He also has great form when it comes to disorienting and unsettling the audience; there are some great moments where space and time seem to bend, done simply and effectively. These are few and far between until the third act, but they’re when the film truly shines. Splicing in grainy black-and-white footage is a weird choice but it works really well in context, taking the story out of its small setting and cleverly suggesting a deeper and grander scope to the story. Even the tried-and-tested ‘creepy mannequins’ trope is used well, as the film tries to have you questioning what might be real and what might be a hallucination.

Unfortunately, about 40 minutes in, the film starts to fall apart faster than a Cadbury’s Flake in a tumble-dryer. It’s about this point that we abandon the father-trying-to-protect-his-daughter narrative completely and we’re introduced to an entirely new set of characters, who’re on a mission to rescue one of the cult members. Their guide is our new protagonist Grady (Ben Cotton). You know Grady is a A Badass because because he growls his expository lines in a monotone so quiet he can sometimes barely be heard over the music. The film’s pacing and structure go out the window here too as everything slows to a crawl and we’re treated to endless scenes of people talking for ages but not saying very much at all. By the film’s midpoint I was irretrievably bored.

This is indisputably the weakest of the film’s ingredients. The dialogue is already a bit dubious at times (“I see that old photograph on the wall has caught your eye,” says one character just after we see that old photograph on the wall catch Greg’s eye – come on, trust your audience to fill in the blanks). That breakfast scene I mentioned earlier is a stark foreshadowing of the bulk of the rest of the film: everyone talks in riddles and cod-metaphysical declarations like “to meet Percy Stevens is to be Percy Stevens, and to be Percy Stevens is to meet Percy Stevens, and to meet Percy Stevens is” and so on ad nauseam. I get it – the circle, circular, fair enough. But they belabour the point so much that the scene just took forever to end.

And most of the rest of the film is like that. Lots and lots of dialogue about the nature of The Circle and its mysterious founder, and how life is death because death is life and doing nothing isn’t doing anything but sometimes you have to do nothing to do something and oh my god just shut up already.  The thing about profound revelations about the nature of the world is that hearing them is supposed to instil you with a sense of awe. It should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as you realise you’re close to understanding a fundamental truth that’s just out of your grasp but if you could just somehow comprehend it… But this is way off that mark. And it just goes on and on and on.

At one point, one of the rescuers complains that the logic of the cult doesn’t make any sense, and she’s certainly right. There’s actually numerous moments like that. Hand-waving your film’s logic by having a character point out it doesn’t make sense isn’t cute, it’s annoying and just draws the audience’s attention to the fact that your film’s logic doesn’t make any sense. The worst part is that Fowler seems to know that it, so he doubles down and has his characters insist that that’s the point. The cult’s logic relies on illogic. It’s meant to sound like utter nonsense, because it’s all a cosmic joke, get it? It’s so shallow that it’s circled back around to deep again, you see? This just doesn’t wash. It’s lazy writing poorly disguised as meaningful philosophy, and frankly it’s insulting the audience.

This is compounded by a poor sound mix that makes the dialogue difficult to parse at times, especially between Cotton and Robinson who both whisper to each other in a monotone that’s all but drowned out by Reid Hendry’s otherwise excellent score. Most of the performances are good enough, and while Robinson is sometimes a bit wooden she’s quite young and early in her career so she has plenty of time to learn and grow. The standout is MacCaul, who does a fine job portraying fatherly concern and confused horror as the shit hits the cult fan. I just wish there had been more of him and his story, which is what sold me on the film in the trailer.

Welcome to the Circle is a disappointment, especially after it had such a promising start. David Fowler clearly knows how to direct as he drums up tension well and is a dab hand at hiding the limitations of budget. It’s just such a shame that it’s wasted on a story that takes pride in making no sense at all while trying to convince us that that’s because it’s actually, like, totally deep and meaningful, man. It feels like Fowler watched The Endless and said ‘Pfft, I can do that’ but didn’t understand any of the real human mechanisms behind why that film works so well.

This is a rare instance of a film that’s left me angry at having spent time on it.

I may have to go watch one of his nature documentaries to calm down.

Review by Sam Kurd