Black Circle

Caught a screening of this at a festival in NYC. I have to admit, I was impressed. It's a low budget film but very high concept. It went a lot of weird places (hypnotism, psychics, doppelgangers, etc) but it was a real fun ride. A lot of original stuff in this one. Some creepy moments. Enjoy the ride.

Edgy, Sexy and Transcendental, this is a mind bending experience, an utterly original and macabre look on the seeking for self improvement. Two sisters are trapped in a life changing and risky mystical cult after being hypnotized by a magnetic musical Record from the 70's. As they experience success and go on alternative styles, soon their ability will charge an irreversible price. Psychedelic, enigmatic and incredibly performed, it's a haunting look at ambition, greed and women's determination.

I like this film! It is full of passion and heart -> the way storytelling should be.

The story is engaging and interesting: I like the notion of comparing now and then with the help of a hypnosis-record and the way it comments on our lack of harmony and peace in modern society.

The cinematography is *beautiful* and the framing brilliant. The montages are well put together with just the right amount of irony and the film's soundtrack is like chocolate: well composed and full of feeling.

Felice Jankell does a great job, (it is a walk in the park for her though), I could do without her nipples in many of the scenes though.

Overall Black Circle is a joyful and inspiring genre film that also gives you deeper aspects to contemplate.

I did not believe that Felicé Jankell could have starred in a worse horror film than Alena. But alas I was dead wrong.

The central conceit of Svart Cirkel/Black Circel is a great one: a vinyl which causes the listener to produce a ghostly doppelganger of sorts that whiches to replace it's original. But the exection of the story is simply terrible.

The cinematography and grading is ugly. Unusally ugly for a Swedish production. The "psychadelic" editing is nueasiating in a bad way. At one point there is a sex scene that was filmed in a way that made me feel sexually assaulted by Hanna Asp and Johan Palm. The story keeps bombarding us with concepts that rarely are sufficiently established. Suddenly two characters appear that are telepaths. I am not saying that it has to be completely explained but they and their power appears out of nowere in such a way that you are left completely confused. We get little to no establishing of these characters and their powers which make their appearence awfully convinient for the plot to move forward. Characters are as thin as paper. The dialoge they have to say is cluncky. Often the characters have to explain the plot as it happens, which gives us little to no tension.

The acting is... pretty phoned in. Felicé Jankell sleeps through most of the film. I think there was only one scene where she was intentionally supposed to behave as if on drugs. The Midfjäll girls from I Miss You make a reapperence as a victim of the vinyl and he ghostly double. I guess they where only because using actual twins would make shooting simpler. To be fair, the Midfjäll gives a pretty convincing performance towards the end, but it's to little to late. Christina Lindberg has hardly acted since the 80's. She acts like someone who has not acted since the 80's.

In the end none of the positive qualites outweights the negative and does not save this from becoming a complete and utter dud.

Black Circle is an enchanting experience. A surreal nightmare, full of bizarre images and sounds, that are etched into the mind of the viewer. It's a bit like The Ring meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, if Dario Argento had directed. It's an unpredictable film, unlike anything you've ever seen in the Swedish language.