I did not believe that Felicé Jankell could have starred in a worse horror film than Alena. But alas I was dead wrong.
The central conceit of Svart Cirkel/Black Circel is a great one: a vinyl which causes the listener to produce a ghostly doppelganger of sorts that whiches to replace it's original. But the exection of the story is simply terrible.
The cinematography and grading is ugly. Unusally ugly for a Swedish production. The "psychadelic" editing is nueasiating in a bad way. At one point there is a sex scene that was filmed in a way that made me feel sexually assaulted by Hanna Asp and Johan Palm. The story keeps bombarding us with concepts that rarely are sufficiently established. Suddenly two characters appear that are telepaths. I am not saying that it has to be completely explained but they and their power appears out of nowere in such a way that you are left completely confused. We get little to no establishing of these characters and their powers which make their appearence awfully convinient for the plot to move forward. Characters are as thin as paper. The dialoge they have to say is cluncky. Often the characters have to explain the plot as it happens, which gives us little to no tension.
The acting is... pretty phoned in. Felicé Jankell sleeps through most of the film. I think there was only one scene where she was intentionally supposed to behave as if on drugs. The Midfjäll girls from I Miss You make a reapperence as a victim of the vinyl and he ghostly double. I guess they where only because using actual twins would make shooting simpler. To be fair, the Midfjäll gives a pretty convincing performance towards the end, but it's to little to late. Christina Lindberg has hardly acted since the 80's. She acts like someone who has not acted since the 80's.
In the end none of the positive qualites outweights the negative and does not save this from becoming a complete and utter dud.
The central conceit of Svart Cirkel/Black Circel is a great one: a vinyl which causes the listener to produce a ghostly doppelganger of sorts that whiches to replace it's original. But the exection of the story is simply terrible.
The cinematography and grading is ugly. Unusally ugly for a Swedish production. The "psychadelic" editing is nueasiating in a bad way. At one point there is a sex scene that was filmed in a way that made me feel sexually assaulted by Hanna Asp and Johan Palm. The story keeps bombarding us with concepts that rarely are sufficiently established. Suddenly two characters appear that are telepaths. I am not saying that it has to be completely explained but they and their power appears out of nowere in such a way that you are left completely confused. We get little to no establishing of these characters and their powers which make their appearence awfully convinient for the plot to move forward. Characters are as thin as paper. The dialoge they have to say is cluncky. Often the characters have to explain the plot as it happens, which gives us little to no tension.
The acting is... pretty phoned in. Felicé Jankell sleeps through most of the film. I think there was only one scene where she was intentionally supposed to behave as if on drugs. The Midfjäll girls from I Miss You make a reapperence as a victim of the vinyl and he ghostly double. I guess they where only because using actual twins would make shooting simpler. To be fair, the Midfjäll gives a pretty convincing performance towards the end, but it's to little to late. Christina Lindberg has hardly acted since the 80's. She acts like someone who has not acted since the 80's.
In the end none of the positive qualites outweights the negative and does not save this from becoming a complete and utter dud.