I get the creeps after scary movies. Like I’ll be afraid to turn around, because I don’t want to know if someone is there. That takes a lot of emotional investment and good storytelling to achieve that feeling from a fiction scenario, right? I think Hillman Curtis just figured out the key to that feeling in record speed. I still have the chills after watching “Circles,” and it wasn’t even three minutes long! It reminds me a lot of Roald Dhal’s short story “The Landlady,” there is an uneasiness from the beginning and the whole story is left very open-ended for the viewer to interpret.
The whole mood of the movie is very uneasy, from the music to the lighting. There is a palpable tension between the two characters the entire scene, their two different personalities and motives clash beautifully. Curtis so effortlessly establishes the “skeptic” and the “believer” through some great dialogue. Neither of them have to come out at say “I believe….” rather their vocabulary choices and tones of voice. When the bald guy says “this would be better if we would were doing mushrooms and in one of your drum circles,” he is clearly polarizing himself as the ‘voice of reason’ and his friend as the new age hippie. His tone is very brisk, business-like, exasperated that his time is being wasted by crazy talk of spirit worlds and the Mayan calendar. His friend, on the other hand, speaks with a lot of pauses, trying to grasp at a larger meaning and purpose to his theories. Even their physical attributes separate them: one is seated, the other standing, one wears white and the other black, one has hair the other has none. This stark contrast adds to the uneasy tone, and makes the ‘grey area’ of the spirit world really stand out.
I honestly can’t believe how much this film accomplishes in such a short time. I feel like I’ve watched a movie but it only took 3 minutes. Within this very short time the viewer experiences the whole range of emotions one visits during a horror/suspense flick: curiosity, skepticism, belief, fear, panic, and an uneasy feel that things aren’t resolved but yet that no solution might be the only solution. I also watched “Roof” and found that it really pales in comparison to “Circles.” “Roof” doesn’t have the same tension that “Circles” does, and I think it’s because there is a vocalized and at one point, physical conflict between the characters. “Circles” has this conflict, but at no point does one of the characters say “You’re wrong” or really degrade the other like the men do in “Roof.” This makes “Circles” a little scarier of course, but I think this tension also makes the film feel like it’s moving along, whereas “Roof” feels very static (which is ironic since the characters talk about how they’re going to have to be on the move). Both of these films are very good though, despite their differences, and so now I have to go watch “Circles” about 5 more times and creep myself out further….