The Circle
shares a general premise with the Night Visions
episode Hate Puppet: A
man finds a book, with the same name as the episode, that predicts
everything that's going to happen for the remainder of the story.
Both these episodes shares a common problem: the book doesn't
actually “predict” things, the book makes them happen. This is
made explicit The Circle,
and at least one scene in Hate Puppet
shows the main character being physical moved by an outside force to
make the book's predictions come true.
I don't know why
horror anthology writers apparently believe that prophecies fulfilled
by force are scary. If I say “you will have a bruise on your
shoulder,” and then punch you in the shoulder, that's not scary.
The fact that it's now an unknown supernatural force punching me in
the shoulder doesn't change that. It would be far more frightening
if the book predicted a series of events that played out on their
own.
Beyond that, this
episode suffers from far too many ideas. It feels like several
scripts that were merged together, and don't really fit. It gets to
the point where instead of being scared, I'm confused about which
supernatural threat I'm supposed to be scared of.
The premise of the
episode is that a witch (Victoria Pratt) uses hypnotized
trick-or-treaters to deliver a hand-written book to a best-selling
author named Brian (Johnathon Schaech), famous for his first novel
under pen-name Robert Collins. The book is titled The Circle,
and credited to Robert Collins.
Brian came to the
cabin with his wife Lisa (Ashley Scott), who planned to ambush him
with his editor (Eric Keenleyside), agent (Sarah Deakins), and
publisher (Melanie Nicholls-King), so they could chew him out for his
lack of progress on his next novel. Initially Brian assumes that the
book is a joke by the others, while they assume he's showing them his
new novel in an overly elaborate prank.
The
novel predicts that a mysterious “Darkness” will attack the
cabin. This takes the form of an oily substance, not unlike the The
Damned Thing. This substance
infects people by getting in their eyes, turning them into
light-sensitive zombies called “Bloodthirsties,” which then
attack the uninfected. Eventually, the darkness will eat them from
the inside. How do we know all this? Because all of this is
straight out of Brian's first book.
It's
been said to never remind people of a better movie they could be
watching. This episode gives us a brief outline of a better story
that doesn't actually exist, because the description Brian gives, the
Darkness laying siege to a small town in Maine, sounds far more
interesting than the episode I found myself watching. It sounds like
a fascinating premise for a Stephen King story. Or, I don't know,
maybe an episode of Fear Itself?
Just a thought.
Seriously,
though, the Darkness being summoned by the book seems a little like
watching Silence of the Lambs,
only with Hannibal Lecter as Buffalo Bill's side-kick. Or better
yet: Count Dracula as Buffalo Bill's side-kick. Two stories that
clearly don't go together. Giving Brian an encyclopedic knowledge of
the Darkness's abilities makes it even worse, since it steals any
sense of mystery from the Darkness. There's never any uncertainty of
what it can or cannot do.
I do
give this episode one edge over Hate Puppet:
the people are actually smart enough to glimpse at the end of the
book. However, the ending given is vague enough to leave doubt about
it's meaning, “And everything returned to the way it had been at
9:45 that Halloween night.” Why they can't read backwards
by even a single sentence I don't know.
The eventual twist:
The witch from the beginning of the episode is “Robbie Collins,”
the actual author of Brian's book. She wrote it under the condition
that Brian leave his wife for her, but he refused to follow through
on his end of the deal. So, she wrote the book to kill them all.
However, she apparently didn't bother to include an ending where she
wins, because Lisa eventually kills her after she arrives at the
cabin.
The ending just
gets bizarre. Somehow a Bloodthirsty Brian is able to create the
ending by writing in the book in his own blood, even though it was
Robbie who created the book. After Brian and Robbie are both dead,
Lisa examines the book and realizes that the last sentence has been
written over and over again. Brian created a stable time-loop,
locking himself and all of his friend, as well as Robbie, in a cycle
of events for all eternity, in a failed effort to stop Robbie's
magic. Yes, if this episode wasn't convoluted enough already, let's
add time travel!
There really isn't
a lot to recommend about this episode. It's many different stories
thrown together. I don't even understand why the book Robbie sent is
called “The Circle,” if the stable time loop was created by
Brian. Did she intend for him to create the loop, trapping her with
everyone else? Was she actually prepared to be killed over and over
again for eternity for revenge on Brian? Furthermore, how did the
characters read the last sentence without noticing that it was
repeated over and over? I don't have the answers, and I don't think
the writers do either. This episode was just trying way too hard.
And so, that concludes Fear
Itself. Pretty underwhelming, huh? So, what's next?
Well, now I intend to take a look at some of the horror franchises
that have shaped our recent age. That, of course, could only start
with...
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