Emma Watson Falls Down The Rabbit Hole of a Sinister Tech Company In 'The Circle'

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is about to take a tumble into the world of technology.

 Everything Is Connected In ''The Circle'' Thriller

It doesn't take a Sherlock to see the story told in The Circle is one we’ve all heard before: be wary of technology. Especially if you’re a millennial. We’re a group that pretty much runs the world, but are also often painted as being the worst and shamelessly dissed in the media. Looking at the role technology plays in our lives, it’s no surprise that this has become an era of rampant narcissism, but it’s not all bad. Instead, The Circle is a cautionary tale: it’s all about unintended consequences and what it means to always be connected. From the teaser trailers at times it looks like The Circle is headed for a predictable trajectory but director James Ponsoldt steers clear of cliched territory, much of it is familiar but isn’t recycled from earlier books and movies on the subject.

This is a thriller and drama that is sprinkled with humor, but the tone of the film is mostly very serious throughout. Emma Watson plays Mae Holland, a millennial living at home with her parents. She’s a sweet girl-next-door type character, but she’s not just a passive follower. Emma Watson brings an awareness and sharp intelligence to the role, one that’s most certainly in line with her feminist values. At the beginning of The Circle we see Mae has had a rather hopeless streak with jobs. She’s in the joyless position of temping at a customer support call centre when she finally gets word from her best friend that the much coveted technology company, The Circle, is hiring, and Mae is a shoe in for the gig. She just has to bang out an interview. Simple!

Mae and Annie (Karen Gillan) roam around the sleek Cali campus.

With Mae’s father’s (Bill Paxton) ALS getting more severe and medical bills soaring as his muscles continue deteriorating, money is a problem in the Holland household. This makes Mae even more desperate to contribute some of her salary to help him get better treatment. With her new job at the Circle Mae has the chance to rake in a big bucks paycheck that can get him the best care. Mae is young and idealistic and it’s not long before she gets hooked by the Circle’s company vision and the chance to excel at something beyond just the boring daily grind of working in a cubicle. What Mae doesn’t realize at first is that everything the Circle wants, the Circle gets.

The Circle’s silicon valley campus is crawling with overzealous twenty and thirty-somethings and is always thrumming with an endless array of programs. There’s daytime dog yoga out on the pristine lawns and live Beck concerts at night. It’s all social, all the time as Mae learns when she’s chided by her coworkers for not taking advantage of her weekend by staying on the Circle’s campus. Setting up an online profile and hanging out at these events Mae finds out isn’t exactly mandatory, but by not going she’s dangerously close to having her approval rating slip down, down, down. Something, that could cost Mae her job. Ever eager to please, she throws herself headlong into the social scene and starts blogging, texting, and live-streaming up a storm on all of her Circle tech. It’s not hard to buy into the idea of the The Circle being an actual company. The Circle’s vaguely Pac-Man shaped logo is as stylized and iconic as Apple’s fruit, and is stamped on everything from smartphones, to laptops, to tablets and all manner of tech.

Mae's multi-screen work station puts the FUN in functional!

The driving goal that fuels the Circle is to unite the world. Yet, as many of the characters so aptly avoid thinking about, that actually makes things smaller. The Circle staff also continually ignores the reality of pushing technology on all and continues their own self-serving plugged-in agendas. Mae’s proposed compulsory voting and the concept of hooking everything up to The Circle is both terrifying and incredibly real. This may be speculative fiction, but the way the company shamelessly stomps on the free choices of their users around the world, feels timely and like it could become a reality at any moment. And this is coming from someone who’s pro-tech!

Tom Hanks plays Eamon Bailey, a sinister Steve Jobs like character, and the man helming the company. Joined by his business partner Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) an oily, weasely, yes-man, Bailey is an unstoppable force in pushing his company forward. Oozing charisma and buzzing with energy, Bailey knows how to work a crowd and inspire his twenty and thirty-somethings work force and keep the Circle on top of the world. One of those ways is when Bailey acknowledges Mae as an exceptional employee, but when raises her up to a celebrity status. Elevating her above her coworkers Mae’s voice is louder than ever and as she comes to realize her words have real power. And real consequences. It’s her moments in the spotlight that spark up an outrage among Circle users which culminates in a tragic accident, that no one sees coming.

Bailey (Tom Hanks) coaxes Mae into his and partner Stenton (Patton Oswalt) 's latest scheme.

The characters in The Circle run the gamut. There’s a spectrum of ideas and opinions, much like they are today. This isn’t some evil Orwellian idea of government and technology like 1985 but instead offers up something both praised and something to be wary of. Don’t expect black and white, instead The Circle is all about the gray areas. Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) plays Mae’s BFF Annie, a sophisticated Scottish business lady who’s always on the go and jet-setting around to other countries. This energetic young twenty-something goes from being a bubbly force of nature for the company, to a total train wreck left fried and broken by the company she so loved. She shows how technology can be unreliable, and the pitfalls of being “plugged in” all the time.

John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)  plays Ty (Mae’s love interest if you squint). The founder of TruYou, a Facebook type platform that took the world of The Circle by storm means he was once big on the scene and big on the screen. But for several years he slipped off the radar until Mae runs into him keeping it on the downlow at his job at the Circle. Unlike the excitable tech-happy millennials romping around, Ty is in the fringes of the company. He’s isolated, observational and guarded. Also cynical. But with good reason. His labor of love, TruYou, has not just been taken away from him by the Circle, but he disagrees with the way his invention is being used and abused on a daily basis. Boyega’s performance of a pained and wronged young man is outstanding. But, unfortunately he’s one of the most underused characters in the movie.

Rounding out the side characters is Mae’s friendzoned guy pal Mercer (Ellar Coltrane). Mercer is a loner, anti-technology and as we come to the horrific realization at the end, a casualty of the Circle. When Mae praises one of his antler chandeliers (like Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, he uses antlers in all of his decorating!) on her blog, a huge firestorm erupts. A mob mentality of people hate Mercer’s guts and accuse him of being everything from an animal hater to a heartless murderer who needs to be punished. Well, punish him they do. After a SoulSearch demo (a program aimed at finding and apprehending criminals in real time) successfully tracks down a convicted woman in England, the crowd demands to seek him out next. Bailey, hamming it up and hand-clapping with  undiluted enthusiasm as always, says they ought to find Mercer next, to reunite him with his former bestie, and the Circle’s girl of the moment, Mae. Hint: this is where the aforementioned tragedy ensues. Welp.  

Ty (John Boyega) takes Mae behind the scenes.

The Circle is enhanced by interesting visual effects: especially the emphasis on the screen.

While Mae is operating under her “full transparency” promise, wearing a body cam that she fires up from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to bed, a barrage of comments pop up in little word bubbles. This ever present white noise of opinions from fans and trolls could’ve been ripped straight out of Facebook and Twitter feeds and adds more authenticity to the world of The Circle.

The Circle is a very real, and slightly scary, story about the role of technology today. Cult enthusiasm runs rampant, as does as we see in a gruesome turn of events, the groupthink phenomenon. The tone here reminds me of Netflix’s Black Mirror episodes “White Bear”, which features a chillingly voyeuristic society, glued to their phones; and “Nose Dive” starring Bryce Dallas Howard as Lacey, a woman in a tech-driven world that revolves around “likes” and “upvotes”, and constant approval and reinforcement. There’s a darkness to this movie that’s hinted at in the trailers. But ultimately, The Circle isn’t a movie about wrong vs right, or bad vs good. It’s something we all understand: technology is inevitable. It can be awesome a lot of the time, but it can also be very flawed. This is not a novel tale, but don’t count it out. It’s deftly performed on the screen by the many talented actors, has a sharp and smart script that sounds anything but scripted, and it doesn’t sink into cliched, melodrama territory. Circles may be round and go on without end, but the runtime in The Circle is on a shorter end. Dragging moments are nowhere in sight, and there aren’t bombastic special effects blowing up every few minutes. Ultimately, this thriller is worthwhile and effortlessly watchable.

All images from imdb