Circle of Eight by Maxx

Director: Stephen Cragg
Writers: Dave Brewman, Brian Horiuchi
Starring: Austin Highsmith, Ryan Doom, John Bishop
Run time: 83 minutes

Jessica moves to the big city, presumably L.A., from some rural part of the Mid-West. Her new home is a big apartment building called the Dante. And I think we can already see where this is heading. She’s on the 8th floor, which in the Inferno would correspond to the level of Hell reserved for Frauds, and later we’ll learn why. Nevermind that given the plotline, Purgatorio would make more sense; there are only seven levels to Pugatory, so we’re stuck in Hell. Not literally, but it feels like it.

As Jessica moves in, a whole series of strange events occur that make her hesitate, but not leave. And I’m not talking about the creepy manager or the fact that the entire building is incredibly dark, and unsafe-seeming when she enters, or the grossly over-intimate neighbors. But after the second body, most people would undoubtedly be leaving. Maybe she paid a really huge deposit on the place. Obviously there’s a certain amount of fatalistic control working here, but that’s not really meant to be known until later; though it is very clumsily foreshadowed over and over again; by clumsily, I mean it is more or less stated directly.

Really the concept of this movie, while not exactly original was perfectly fine. But certain things are so contrary to normal sensical behavior that it makes for some frustrating viewing. When people have been seemingly driving you insane with morbid pranks do you let one of them talk you out of your clothes because he says he’s always loved you? And I still can’t figure out what was meant to have happened at the end. How the change was wrought by Jessica that resulted in the final scenes. And where did she and Ryan go?

The use of color in the film and lighting/shooting was ok and did their job setting the mood, unfortunately all that was undone by the script, which was acted about as well as it could have been considering the writing – that is to say, it was bad.

An average concept that’s been done better before. And you know what’s going to happen; trust me, you do. So save your time and watch something that you won’t be checking the time left for.

1 out of 5!