University professor Karl Markusson (Edward Baker-Duly) takes 4 archaeology students on a field trip to a remote Scottish island. On arrival at the island they discover that some of the rocks have cryptic writing on them and slowly they all start to gain an understanding of these mysterious scribblings. However, as they begin to learn more about what has happened on the island the group start to fear that they may all be in danger...
The Circle has clearly been made on a limited budget featuring a group of actors who I've never heard of (the only name I was familiar with was Ross Noble). However, low-budget doesn't necessarily have to equate to low quality or low entertainment and a film like The Circle doesn't quite fail in this respect, but it doesn't quite succeed either...
A couple of immediate problems with this film have been addressed in my review summary; the acting here is pretty poor with all 5 of the actors showing very limited range and I found myself struggling to engage with any of the characters. With the exception of Melody, I found the characters to be annoying and self-centred which resulted in me not having the vested interest in what happened to any of them.
Some of its strength lie in the fact that the film has a reasonable story attached to it and some of the night time sequences are suitably tense and there are some moments of suspense during the day time as well. Director Peter Callow does an OK job at creating a sense of isolation and given the limited resources and budget it isn't too bad overall.
If you can get past some of the annoying characters and the generally wooden acting then what you're left with is a watchable film that very much does exactly what it says on the tin.
