Black Circle — Black Circle( Blu Ray)

Black Circle aka Svart Cirkel is a 2018 Mexican/ Swedish horror movie directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano (Night of the Wolf, Here Comes the Devil and Come Play with Me). The film stars the legendary Christina Lindberg (Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Sex and Fury and Maid in Sweden), Felice Jankell (Young Sophie Bell, The Bunker Game and Tak för Senast), Inger Nilsson (Pippi Longstocking, Pippi in the South Seas and Pippi on the Run), and two new up and coming talents, who have very bright futures, the Midfjäll sisters Erica and Hanna.

Black Circle has a fairly unique premise, two sisters, Celeste (Jankell) and Isa (Erica Midfjäll) become dangerously enchanted by a 1970s vinyl record by hypnotist, Lena Carlsson (Lindberg). The recording which was intended to help destress the listener has a terrifying side-effect, it spawns an evil clone of that person. Over time, this doppelganger will grow in strength, eventually taking over the life of the individual it is a duplicate of. Celeste and Isa, seek out Carlsson in the hope that she can help them take back their lives before it’s too late. 

This is a truly remarkable movie, a surreal nightmarish psychological thriller that pushes all the right buttons. Bogliano’s movie is visually stunning with one of the finest soundtracks (by Rickard Gramfors, who directed Thriller: A Cruel Documentary) I’ve heard in many a year. It’s a glorious slab of analogue synth goodness that gives the movie an extra creepy dimension, which works perfectly alongside some pretty messed-up visuals. Bogliano marks out flashback sequences, that fill in some of the back story of the album’s genesis by making them look like grainy, decaying, glitchy video tapes.  The whole thing is genuinely quite unsettling in places, where the visuals and audio work in perfect unison to create something solid and scary. The performances from the cast are excellent throughout and it’s especially wonderful to see Christina Lindberg back on screen doing what she does best. 

This new Blu-ray release from Synapse looks great (in those scenes where it’s meant to) and uses the original 5.1 surround soundtrack. Bonus material includes an audio commentary with director, Bogliano, a short called Don’t Open Your Eyes, interviews with both Bogliano and Lindberg as well as behind-the-scenes featurettes and the movie’s original teaser trailer. On top of all that, the set features another key selling point for me, a CD of Rickard Gramfors’ remarkable hypnotic electronic score. As well as being a key part of the movie, in much the same way Goblin scores were integral to Dario Argento’s movies, it works as a stand-alone listen.

Overall, I was blown away by Black Circle, it’s a beautiful, scary, suspenseful, psychedelic thriller that stands out among the generic modern horror that has swamped the marketplace. The films of Panos Cosmatos are probably the closest things I’ve seen to Black Circle in the last twenty or thirty years, but I think the likes of Andrej Zulawski’s Possession represents another touchstone in the genesis of its visual style, whilst movies like Censor and Berberian Sound Studio bear some slight tonal similarities. The movie’s ending comes in for some stick, but to be honest, how do you adequately bring a film like this to an end?