Movie review: Circle

50 people are standing in a dark room in a kind of circle. They're sleeping. One woman wakes up. She's scared. She tries to talk to the others. but they all sleep. She wants to step forward, but instantly a buzzer goes off. Slowly, others wake up as well. When suddenly the lights turn on, they all wake. Whoever lifts their feet from the ground, dies. 

Circle is an American psychological thriller. It was by inspired by the drama 12 Angry Men (1957). The people in he room learn that every 2 minutes one of them is killed. If you try to get away, you die as well. At first everyone is frightened, but when they realize that they can control who dies by voting, chaos begins. Who will die? Who should die? Will someone survive? Who should survive? 

Like I already told you in my review on After the Dark, I love philosophical movies. When I was very young, I already bugged my mom with philosophical questions: Why is a chair a chair? And not a table. When you call it a chair, does it means it IS a chair? I was always trying to define things. And still am. I think philosophy is a beautiful thing and I can dwell in these thoughts for hours. Especially during my time at university, I could really drive people crazy. I questioned everything. 

So I like dilemmas. And thought experiments. After the Dark was also about surviving. Surviving an atomic disaster. I only a few people can survive, who should survive? Based on what would you make your decision? 

That's a line said in this movie: "But I have just as much of a right to live as any of you!" In the Circle, they have the same discussion. 50 people are in that room. Every 2 minutes, someone dies.  They figure out that they can control who dies. They're able to vote. That's where the discussion begins. People don't vote randomly. They start to discuss. Will everyone die, except for the last one standing? Do they just need to kill 'the right one' and then it will end? Do they have something in common? 

But that's not it. The debate begins about who deserves to live. If one person could walk out, should they pick the pregnant lady? Or the child? And who should die first? The eldest people? People who might have done something wrong? Sick people? 

All the scenarios pass by. Jobs are discussed. Race. Age. If you have children. If you speak English. If you have a disability or not. If you're gay or straight. They're desperately thinking of reasons to discuss whether one person deserve to live more than the other. So many discussions pass by and we get to see how the people in the group judge each other. 

The movie takes mainly place in the circle. It's a psychological thriller and mainly makes you think. I thought the movie was mainly interesting. Not per se scary or really tense. I liked the actors. It was a mix of actors and actresses that I already know and hadn't heard of yet. I really liked seeing Julie Benz in Circle (Especially since I will see her at Weekend of Hell).  

It's a bit weird to see people debating about the worth of a life. About who deserves to survive and who doesn't. About what it means to contribute. And that, while they don't even know where they are. Or why they're there. They think of their own rules and reasons. We tend to see everything in a certain frame. And if we let go of that, what will we have left? How do we know what to do? 

And there's of course the question: What's this circle? Who put them there? And are they the only ones?