BLACK CIRCLE (aka SVART CIRKEL, 2018)

Newly released for the first time on Blu-ray/DVD from Synapse Films!
Directed/Written by Adrian Garcia Bogliano.
Starring Christina Lindberg, Felice Jankell, Erica Midfjäll, Hanna Midfjäll, Hanna Asp, Johan Palm, Johan Palm, Hans Sandqvist, Iwa Boman, Isabella Li Black, Madeleine Barwén Trollvik, Rickard Gramfors, Jenny Berg, Martin Rutegård, Pablo Guisa Koestinger, Karyna Martinez

Struggling with her college thesis, Celeste (Felice Jankell) visits her sister Isa (Erica Midfjäll) who has recently become much more successful in her career and life in general. Isa claims her turnaround is due to an out of print self-help vinyl record which she listens to subconsciously while sleeping and encourages Celeste to listen to it. But when Isa is awakened mid-session, she realizes some very bizarre things are going on while the record plays. This drives Celeste and Isa into a transcendental world of doppelgangers, exorcisms, psychic powers, and more unusual phenomena.

BLACK CIRCLE is not your typical horror film. Right off the bat, having a Swedish film made by a Mexican director is quite odd, but BLACK CIRCLE borrows elements from all over the horror spectrum, including exorcism rituals, black magic, doppelgangers, pod people, telepathy, and more. This grab bag of unusual elements might be a bit off putting for those wanting to put their horror into specific boxes, but director Adrian Garcia Bogliano, responsible for such awesome films as COLD SWEAT, HERE COMES THE DEVIL, and LATE PHASES: NIGHT OF THE WOLF, delivers a surreal little retro-style film with BLACK CIRCLE. This is definitely a strange film, oddly put together with different film stocks, dream sequences, and all kinds of psychedelic effects. Bogliano has never been a conventional filmmaker, but this is the most arthouse film to date.

While it’s not conventional, Bogliano never loses focus on the main dilemma about these two sisters whose lives have been upended by playing this mystical record. Felice Jankell and Erica Midfjäll are likable in their respective rolls, both being rather physically exhausting as they go through a very complex form of exorcism during the climax. Adding to the feelings of phantasmagoria is Iwa Bowman as Tora, one of the makers of the Black Circle record who now fights to destroy them all and reverse the damaging magics they were dabbling in. I also want to note that the teen psychic lovers who aid in the ritual, played by Hanna Asp and Johan Palm, add another layer of quirkiness to this already offbeat film. While Jankell and Midfjäll ground the film, Bowman, Asp, and Palm loosen the constraints of normalcy with their oddball characters.

The climax is complex, involving a reverse exorcism which instead of expelling a demon from a possessed person, it compels a doppelganger to integrate itself back into the original body in order to make them whole. If there’s a criticism I have for this overlong climax, it is that the process is overly complex and often redundant since the ritual is performed twice. While the results of the rituals are different in both cases, the fact that the story chooses to repeat this process so close together makes it rather tedious to endure the overlong process a second time.

BLACK CIRCLE is not going to be fore everyone. It incorporates experimental and arthouse nuances with giallo tones and then expands into the area of psychic phenomena. This isn’t a movie you can casually watch. I was enrapt mostly in the outstanding visuals Bogliano incorporated during the scenes that delved into the metaphysical. It is a film that is best experienced rather than simply watched. If you’re looking for something that is more of a transcendental hodge podge of some of the best elements of 70’s horror such as INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, ALTERED STATES, SUSPIRIA, and THE FURY, then take a deep dive into BLACK CIRCLE.

Check out the trailer here!!