Social Circle (2016) Online

I'm wary of anything I come across with very few ratings but high praise; typically it's actually quite awful and the high praise are from those who either worked on the film and/or friends/family padding the rating. Now, this film only had seven ratings and one review. Still a high rating for low production and non-actors, and one can tell right away the inexperience of everyone. However, if the story is engaging: none of that matters.

Caught this on Amazon Prime. Previous day I finished rating the first 15 seasons of NCIS at Netflix and thought I'd come over to Prime and watch movies in my queue; hundreds of movies in my queue. This film being one of the first ones I put there a month or so after joining. Just now getting to it.

There are problems, as there would be. Only three students in a class (though apparently it's detention, still...) where a police detective talks about not doing drugs (which was humorous on the part of a female student and her reply to the detective.) I know the town they filmed this in (actually called Social Circle) has less than 5,000 residents but I think they could have found a few more teenagers as backdrop. The kidnapper who breaks into the house (apparently the front door) during the day time and the door is actually open (you can see it open as he breaks the glass.) Also, he wears a hood over his face but removes it for some reason.

It had been a comedic film (some things actually humorous while other things not so much) until 20 minutes in and it just got violent in a second. The kidnapped ex-wife of the man the kidnapper wants to rob a bank-the wife briefly gets away and someone passes by and this funny talking kidnapper just shoots and kills two people passing by. It was actually a surprising scene, it took the comedic element out and made everything serious for a moment; and it was just a moment because then it became comedic in a scene right after where the detective sounds like she's a bit of a moron in doing her job.

After that scene it doesn't really go anywhere. The detective has her day off and basically that's what we're watching. We do get some intermittent scenes of the kidnapper having a day off of his own with a hooker. The detective is having relationship problems and the kidnapper tries to have a philosophical conversation with a hooker about relationships. It was weird. Not funny weird, just weird. They went 45 minutes without profanity. Some humorous replacement words but they ruined it by adding profanity 45 minutes in. Don't think me a prude, or anything, I use profanity every day myself but the replacement words were humorous. 'The Groundhog Day' rip of Stephen Tobolowsky's character was unnecessarily stupid. Anyway...the ending became stupid. The ex-wife finally escapes and the kidnapper comes back to shoot her but oh, somehow he has an ax and now he's chasing her through the woods like a horror film and then the detective shows up.

Typically I don't find a good low production film too often. The rating I had in my head throughout this film was 6/10 but then they did some horror film rip and Groundhog Day rip near the end, which was nonsensical, and the bad guy throws the ax at the detective and she stands there like a moron and doesn't shoot him? Then he runs off and she shoots her gun in the air to get him to stop which he doesn't. Then she finally shoots him in the butt to stop him. What?

The movie "Social Circle" was a quirky laugh out loud comedy thriller in a small town setting. The director's twisted humor along with his sense of style which kept you on the edge of your seat throughout made this movie a different type of movie than the regular run of the mill suspense thrillers that you would generally see. Gina Hay Bryan's character of the sister of the lead was hilarious. The lead Amber McCullough's vulnerable yet tough cop in this small town caper was perfectly cast in this role. I would say this movie is a mix of Fargo with Natural Born Killers. Even Jack Moon's character was hilarious yet he portrayed it perfectly to the tee and kept you trying to guess what to expect next. For his directorial debut, I think Jack Moon has a unique and edgy mind and I am looking forward to seeing his next film. Overall B+.