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A relic from the 1970s – self-help record with the goal of teaching the listener to “reach your full potential,” causing terrifying chaos between the two sisters. Black circle2018 horror movie worth seeking out now the flow continues to tremble.
Made in Sweden by Spanish writer-director Adrian Garcia Bogliano (2022). The Exorcist), Black circle It pulls you right into the woo-woo by opening a movie clip purporting to be taken from a correspondence course sold by the “Stockholm Institute for Magnetic Research.” The technique he pushes is a kind of hypnosis to the extreme, and his claims are fantastic. Who wouldn’t want to become the best version of themselves by clearing away all the negative energy and intrusive thoughts they’ve been repressing since childhood?
It’s a tempting proposition for twenty-year-old Celeste (Felice Jankell), whose life currently revolves around an existential vacuum. She has just broken up with her boyfriend and been fired from her summer job, and writer’s block has prevented her from even starting her long-awaited school newspaper. So when her long-lost sister Isa (Erica Midfjäll) invites her to visit her office, Celeste is impressed by Isa’s great work and high spirits. Things are going great, Jesus tells her, and he wants to help Celeste turn her life around.
While Celeste is a little annoyed with her docile sister, this is replaced by confusion when Jesus presents her with a record and tells her to “play the B-side as soon as you fall asleep.” The effects are life-changing, he promises, and they all stem from this strange LP he finds among the trash left behind by “grandma’s cousin Lundstrom,” the orphaned sisters’ only living relative until they die. Celeste is skeptical of what feels like a cult arrival, but she gives it a spin. The next morning, he sits up straight, rushes to his laptop and triumphantly flips through the pages.
Of course, there’s a catch to this miraculous fortune, and such Black circle Set to show what this capture is like, the film divides itself into short chapters, unlike a correspondence course. It also returns to the movie-within-a-movie in some exposition about “magnetic hypnosis,” presented in optimistic terms that don’t match the increasingly disturbing results we see with the sisters. The technique guides the person to release the mental baggage that has left them behind, but once the baggage is removed, it takes the form of an “Ethereal Double”, a kind of doppelganger that increasingly draws energy from its original source.
It’s disturbing enough even before Black circle If the Ethereal Double gets too comfortable in the human realm, it introduces another layer of mythology involving intrusive creatures. This is one side of the story that doesn’t get enough coverage, though Black circle otherwise deeply invested in the subversion of New Age psychology. Overwhelmed by paranoid delusions that their lives may just be real, Jesus and Celeste take drastic action to help track down the woman who released the record, a psychic who had her own tragedy in learning about the harmful effects of magnetic hypnosis. his final victims.
Although the “counter-exorcism” ritual that takes over the third act of the film is a bit long, Black circle has a unique energy and confident, often psychedelic visual style that allows it to carve out a unique space in the realm of cursed media films. But unlike the characters, for example, Ring-those who watch a horrific video for entertainment, unaware that it will end their suffering – Black circle‘s sisters, albeit naively, deliberately open themselves up to LP’s mind-altering abilities. The resulting journey brings a lot of horror, but it also shows Black circle‘s deepest theme: you have to do what it takes to overcome the negativity that accumulates in your life, rather than hoping for healing by wishing the bad things away.
Black circle now streaming on Shudder.
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