Welcome to The Circle Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Welcome to The Circle Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson November 14, 2020

It seems a peculiar choice by Canadian filmmaker David Fowler that after directing seven Disney nature documentaries, he chose to write and direct an oddball picture about a demonic cult as his feature debut. After a credits sequence with stock footage, Welcome to The Circle opens with a voice-over (set against a black screen) that the viewer could easily perceive as delivered by Willem Dafoe. "Life has made me what I am. So has death. The wonders I've seen in this world and the 'other' have shaped my creative decisions. And I have created something unthinkable." These are the words of one Percy Stephens, a naval intelligence officer in Special Operations during the early 1950s. Stephens later founded a secret society known as The Circle.

The present narrative begins with a camping trip involving Greg (Mathew McCaull) and his preteen daughter Samantha (Taylor Dianne Robinson), who is reading a bedtime story to her father. The two campers look to settle in for a pleasant night's sleep when a bear apparently claws his way through the the tent, scarring Greg pretty badly. He awakens in the woods to see three nurses, Lotus Cloud (Heather Doerksen), Sky (Andrea Brooks), and Rebekah (Cindy Busby). They transport Greg to another dwelling in the forest called The Circle. After sleeping a long while, he inquires about Samantha, who's now wearing a mask and wants to keep it on. Was she also injured in the bear attack? Samantha has become so enchanted by Lotus, Sky, and Rebekah that she refuses to sneak out and depart The Circle with her dad. Matthew (Michael Rogers) is the group's current ringleader and spouts a lot of mumbo jumbo to Greg about Stephens and the cult's origins. About the midway point of Welcome to The Circle, Fowler and his editor Flavio Bidese take the audience inside an RV where Grady (Ben Cotton), a de-programmer, and his friends, Gabriella (Hillary Jardine) and James (Matt Bellfleur), patiently plot their entrance into The Circle. As a boy, Grady was raised in the cult so he knows a lot of its secrets. Gabriella and James have a loved one trapped inside and want to rescue her. Will anyone make it out of The Circle alive?

Let's all gather in a circle, children.

At the beginning of the film, Fowler tries to subvert the horror viewer's expectations with a subjective shot (from someone or something's POV) peering at the yellow tent. This shot composition was famously employed in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. (Is Jason watching the campers from behind a tree?) This was probably used in other genre films before the fourth Friday but the point here is that Fowler is preparing his audience for either a mauling or slaughter. It's admirable that he takes the story along a much different path.

The problem with Welcome to The Circle, though, is Fowler over-bakes his story with too many of the same scenes. For example, when one is initiated in The Circle, both everlasting life and everlasting death become endless cycles where the victims will go round and round, staying in the same place. When one thinks he has exited one door to go to a different room, he's arrived at an identical one. There seems to be no way out. Fowler repeatedly portends doom for the next victims when they see a lifeless mannequin of themselves.

Fowler could have (and should have) gone bolder in his vision. His movie has three gorgeous women skimpily clad in white. Why not make at least one of them Greg's seductress? Instead, they resemble sexily dressed siblings of the Stepford Wives. As Greg, Matthew MacCaull has a face and persona like Michael Fassbender and one wishes that his role was more smartly scripted. Fowler has trouble in deciding a fate for him.

Welcome to The Circle features some most interesting found footage film in black-and-white that's often intercut with the contemporary color scenes, which are well-lensed by cinematographer Stirling Bancroft. But the fact that the older stock footage is more interesting than the present narrative indicates the scripting problems the movie has. Welcome to The Circle just isn't as "deep" a cinematic trip that the followers of Percy Stephens would want you to believe.

Welcome to The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Artsploitation Films' recent release of Welcome to The Circle appears in its originally shot aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. Screenshots 17-20 are of the stock footage shots that Fowler and his crew either recently photographed or extracted from unknown archival sources. Daylight scenes showcase sun-dappled leaves (e.g., capture #5) and other pleasures in the forest. Fowler and Bancroft capture some very bright sunlight through cabin windows and the windscreen of the RV (e.g., frame #s 3, 10, 13, & 14). There's an extended scene with Greg and Gabriella in a darkened cabin with mirrors and the only light comes via a cigarette lighter and a little red tinting (see screenshots 15-16). It's so dark that it looks like they're in a cave. The color scenes have a nice veneer of grain to them. The only artifacts appear on the older footage. Artsploitation has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 24552 kbps. Note: there's another Blu-ray of Welcome to The Circle courtesy of White Pearl Movies in Germany.

Artsploitation provides twelve chapter selections for the 93-minute film.

Welcome to The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Artsplotiation has supplied an English DTS-HD Master Audio (2883 kbps, 24-bit) and two lossy tracks: Dolby Digital Audio 5.1 Surround (448 kbps) and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (448 kbps), which are both in English. The lossless mix does a very competent job with spoken words, which are heard clearly. Off-screen dialogue, door knocks, and other f/x are amplified through SL. Other ambience is more seldomly used through SR. When I listened to Reid Hendry's score play as Sky chases after Samantha, I immediately thought of Brad Fiedel's pulsating electronic rhythms from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). "Sarah on the Run" and "Escape from the Hospital (and T1000)" were the two cues that first came to my mind. Hendry overlaid a couple of exotic instruments to his T2-sounding music. In addition, there are folk tracks by Jo Krasevich on the non-diegetic sound track. They are played over each credit sequence that bookend the film with two ballads sandwiched in the middle. I also listened to the 2.0 mix and it's plenty loud in places, even at normal listening levels.

The optional English SDH display in a tall sans serif font with light yellow lettering. I watched the movie a second time with them on. They provide a complete and accurate transcription of dialogue and music/sound effects.

Welcome to The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1:52, 1080p) - Artsploitation's official trailer for Welcome to The Circle is framed in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (192 kbps).

• () - Bonus previews for the Artsploitation titles Dead Dicks (2019), Red Christmas (2016), Happy Times (2019), and The Dead Ones (2019).

Welcome to The Circle Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Upon re-watching Welcome to The Circle, I came up with the theory that Percy Stephens was reincarnated as the bear that attacked Greg and Samantha. The film seems to imply that for every visitor who penetrates The Circle's mythical vortex, Percy's demonic spirit can jump from soul to soul. For all of its flaws and monotonous repetitions, David Fowler's directorial debut is a fascinating misfire. Fans of Twin Peaks will want to give it a spin. Artsploitation Films' transfer and uncompressed 5.1 mix are both very good. I would give the indie label's disc a more ringing endorsement had it included some bells and whistles but unfortunately, there are none. The movie is WORTH WATCHING so at minimum, I'd recommend a RENTAL.