The Strangers, the stranded-in-the forest dread of Cabin in the Woods, the frolicking feminist folk madness of Midsommar, and pretentious brain-teasing psychological puzzle thrillers like Inception and Memento. This confused pastiche of approaches to modern cinematic horror might have amounted to something bold and thought-provoking in the right directorial guidance. But in this case, at the helm of this convoluted supernatural misfire is writer/director David Fowler, whose day job is working on Disney projects.
A father (Greg, played by Matthew McCaull) and daughter Samantha (Taylor Dianne Robinson) camping in a tent in the woods are injured in a supposed bear attack (although we never see any onscreen proof of this) and end up being fixed up and looked after by what at first seem to be a strange but innocuous but hippy forest cult. One of the most prominent members is, naturally, named Lotus Flower (Heather Doerksen), and the managerial muscle behind the group, Mathew (Michael Rogers), recites stilted dialogue that sounds like it was lifted from a Star Trek episode (“Can I offer you sustenance?” he asks Greg when serving dinner). Meanwhile the young women who are part of “the circle” begin to seem increasingly creepy with their New Agey “love and blessings” greetings and other exaggerated formal niceties. To be fair, the first half hour of Circle manages to drum up some real edge-of-your-seat tension.
The father’s fears are justified when one night he spies on the cult members and witnesses a grisly act of murder. He tries to make a run for his car the next day with his daughter in tow, but she’s already been brainwashed by the cult and doesn’t want to leave. While this initial sequence of scenes does a fair job of building suspense, Fowler’s film shifts perspectives, and suddenly we’re in a motorhome with a trio of cult busters, led by the intense Grady (played with comically overheated melodrama by Ben Cotton), out to try and crack the secrets of “the Circle” and rescue loved ones from the powerful psychological grip of the pesky demon worshippers. It’s at this point that the whole boring philosophy behind the Circle starts to emerge and, unfortunately, squelches any memory of the film’s earlier gripping pace. Soon the viewer gets lost in a barrage of metaphysical hooey about liminality and real, fake, and “fake-fake” worlds. By the time we get a glimpse of the Circle’s shape-shifting spiritual leader, a demon named Percy Stevens (the “greatest entity ever known”), the average viewer’s ability to successfully suspend disbelief will no doubt have been pushed beyond any reasonable limits. Not Recommended.