By
now, the booming market for audiophile vinyl should have everyone convinced of
the LP’s superior sound quality. That is great when you are listening to
vintage Blue Note jazz, but not so hot in the case of a creepy 1970s self-help
album with the dangerous power to mesmerize listeners. At first, two sisters
feel empowered by the record, but the experience takes a dark turn in Adrian
Garcia Bogliano’s Black Circle, which screens during Scary Movies XII.
You
could think of the Stockholm Center for Magnetic Research as the Swedish equivalent
of Tony Robbin and other such self-help gurus, who initially seem beneficial,
but soon drag the unwary into a state of abject horror. To be fair, the now-defunct
Institute tried to recall their LP, but somehow Isa found one among the
possessions of a distant relative who recently passed away. After experiencing
sudden success at work after listening, she passes it on to her slacker grad
student sister Celeste.
After
duly spinning the B-side before falling asleep, she is suddenly able to whip
out her thesis. However, her second listening is interrupted by a stoned
friend. As a result, Celeste sees something pretty disturbing that scares off
spinning the record any further. Unfortunately, the dark, otherworldly process
unleashed by the record has progressed much further in Isa’s case. To save her
sanity and possibly her life, the sisters seek help from the people who created
it, Lena Carlsson, a “master magnetizer” and daughter of the institute’s
founder and Mårten, her late father’s surviving right-hand man. Of course, the
process will be fraught with peril, but two young psychics happen to show up
just in time to help, as if they were compelled to be there.
Black
Circle is
a triumph of genre art direction, cinematography, and mise-en-scene that brilliantly
recreates the look and tone of 1970s Euro-horror movies. Every detail is
perfectly rendered. Yet, the narrative is still wholly original and completely engrossing.
Frankly, this is the best horror or horror-ish film to play with doppelganger
themes since maybe the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
far-eclipsing Jordan Peele’s Us (which was admittedly pretty good).
Without
question, Circle’s MVP is Christina Lindberg, the Swedish 1970s exploitation
star, who plays Carlsson like the daughter of Peter Cushing and Lin Shaye. She
basically magnetizes viewers with her commanding presence. Hans Sandqvist is also
appropriately Nordic and reserved as old Mårten, while Erica and Hanna Midfjäll
really keep the audience off balance, as Isa and her double.
Spanish-born
Bogliano has steadily built an international reputation as a horror master, but
his best films, the English language Night of the Wolf (a.k.a. Late
Phases) and now the Swedish-set Circle, have been produced outside
the Iberian sphere of influence. In terms of the constituent elements, Circle
is almost as much science fiction as horror, but Bogliano creates an
unsettling sense of foreboding and cranks up the tension to wickedly high
levels. This is definitely auteurist genre filmmaking. Very enthusiastically
recommended, Black Circle screens Monday (8/19), as part of Scary Movies
XII.
