James Ponsoldt’s The Circle is in no shape to exist as either a technological thriller or an Orwellian warning of waning privacy in today’s selfie-obsessed society. The film feels like an unfinished work, a lump of clay half-fashioned into, well, something, yet never placed in the kiln for firing.

Harry Potter graduate Emma Watson centers the picture as Mae Holland — or at least is supposed to, but the ingenue is stunningly miscast and working so far below her fighting class that her naive newcomer to Silicon Valley threatens to float away with any sudden gust. Escaping the number-not-a-name existence of a corporate cubicle farm, Mae lands a customer-support gig at The Circle, clearly a stand-in for both Google and Apple, with American treasure Tom Hanks (Sully) as Eamon Bailey, its ersatz Steve Jobs. With a campus that boasts such amenities as yoga classes, Beck concerts and, um, live improv, The Circle stands as the workplace among every self-aggrandizing millennial, and its gadgets are as omnipresent in their lives as underpants.

Bailey’s latest baby is SeeChange, all-seeing cameras embedded in sleek spheres the size of cat’s-eye marbles; because of their portability and line of camouflaged colors, SeeChange cams are ideal for global “accountability.” Mae becomes something of a cause célèbre when she agrees to wear one and live a life of a broadband-broadcast transparency 24/7 (with three-minute breaks to heed nature’s call). Then Bailey releases software that allows SeeChange users to find anyone anywhere in the world in the matter of minutes — crowd-sourced bounty hunting, if you will. Raise your hand if you think Very Bad Things will come of this.

Indeed, they do — both in the movie and, more to the point, to it. Pardon the pun, but The Circle’s better-watch-out message strikes one as rather square. As shiny as Mae’s environs and Ponsoldt’s film are, its clarion call about good technology’s capacity to serve evil ends is older than the dial-up modem — just ask the prehistoric apes bludgeoned by that newfangled bone — so predictability is hardwired into the plot. Reliable sources tell me Dave Eggers’ same-named 2013 novel (on which the film is based) carried a satiric edge; if so, that has been stripped in the story’s transition from page to screen, and Eggers himself shares the blame, as he shares scripting duties with director Ponsoldt.

In past films — Smashed, The End of the Tour and especially The Spectacular Now — Ponsoldt demonstrated an assured deftness for balancing the alkaline and the acidic, which makes the deafness of tone displayed here all the more worrisome. His knack for guiding great performances in absentia, undeniable talents come off undeniably poor, with Watson lacking the gravitas — or likability — to function as the film’s anchor. As reliable an actor as Hanks is, villainous roles are not his strong suit. (There is a reason Jimmy Stewart avoided them, Tom.)

No actor is worse than Ellar Coltrane (the boy of Boyhood), whose childhood pal of Mae’s cannot deliver even the simplest dialogue (“Bye”) with authenticity. No actor is luckier than John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), who is given nothing of value to do — one of the movie’s many introduced-then-discarded elements. And no actor suffers more embarrassment than Karen Gillan (In a Valley of Violence), whose Circle-exec character is under such immense stress that she appears increasingly pale ’n’ frail, bringing to mind An American Werewolf in London’s ghoulish running gag of an ever-decomposing Griffin Dunne; too bad Ponsoldt and Eggers are not aiming for laughs, but paranoia … and missing by a cringeworthy mile. —Rod Lott

Whereas the Manson Family’s murder spree registered as terrifyingly true in the nonfiction best seller Helter Skelter, the out-of-date dramatization Wolves at the Door is merely a welter — by definition, a confused mess. For a motion picture that barely cracks the one-hour mark, to be so mired is no mean feat.

On Aug. 9, 1969, five people were slain brutally at the L.A. home of director Roman Polanski. In depicting the events of that instantly infamous night as a horror-thriller, the polished Wolves reeks of bad taste. Characters are based on the real-life victims — most notably, pregnant sex-bomb actress Sharon Tate (Katie Cassidy, Taken), coffee heiress Abigail Folger (Elizabeth Henstridge, TV’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring (Miles Fisher, Final Destination 5) — but minus last names, as if the omission makes all the difference in respectful distancing.

As the good guys and girls move about the Cielo Drive home like fish swimming cluelessly in a barrel, we glimpse the menacing visages and ominous stares of Manson’s minions outside as they pass windows and mirrors. The evil doll of Annabelle, director John R. Leonetti’s previous spook show, possessed more personality than these cardboard-cutout criminals who have been retrofitted with the Stock Movie Villain’s uncanny ability to be hiding in all places at all times.

Beyond exploitation of subject, the most problematic element among Wolves at the Door’s litany of them is that it offers no point, nor has reason to exist. Post-dinner, Sharon and her party enter the house to end the evening; the killers invade and slaughter them one by one; the end. No closure, no comeuppance, no courtroom drama. Leonetti does conclude his film with black-and-white footage of the real Charles Manson uttering one of his wackadoo phrases that perenially make him the least popular person in the room — specifically, the one where the parole board sees fit to hold its hearings. —Rod Lott

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As far as I have surmised, Arnold Schwarzenegger does three things really well:
1. Be an unstoppable killing machine (either human or cyborg).
2. Poke fun at himself.
3. Secretly impregnate the help.

Unfortunately, only two of those relate to onscreen activity, and neither is required of him by the demands of Aftermath. Instead, the dramatic thriller finds the one-time box-office champ in Maggie mode: dour, dreary and even depressing.

In Aftermath, the near-septuagenarian Schwarzenegger portrays Roman, a blue-collar family man anxiously awaiting the return of his wife and daughter on an overseas flight. When he arrives at the airport to pick them up, he is greeted not with the joy of a reunion, but the tragic news that an accident has occurred: the midair collision of two descending planes, one of which carried his loved ones. Blame is placed on white-collar family man Jake (Scoot McNairy, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), illogically the only air traffic controller on duty at the time, although technically, faulty equipment is the real culprit.

But every tragedy needs a villain’s face, and Roman is intent on hunting Jake down to confront him and demand the apology he has received from no one. Meanwhile, the weight of reality bears heavily on Jake’s shoulders, threatening to tear his family asunder as well. (Perennial Taken victim Maggie Grace hits some nice, understated notes as his wife.)

Having successfully directed one Expendable through a more serious ringer before (Jason Statham in Blitz), Elliott Lester faces an uphill battle with Arnold in Aftermath. Schwarzenegger simply hasn’t the acting chops to pull off this kind of high-stakes drama, and his discomfort with trying appears more evident the thinner the material gets. McNairy is reliable as ever, but underserved by a script (from Javier Gullón, 2013’s unconventional Enemy) that keeps its thrills as separated as bookends and fills in all the minutes between with the maudlin processes of a grief-recovery workbook.

When our two leads finally meet toward the film’s conclusion, you may wish Schwarzenegger needn’t have bothered with knocking on the door, when the simple blast of a bazooka would have done just fine 30 years ago. That is the loss I feel. —Rod Lott

From the start, we’re in agreement that Attack of the Morningside Monster sounds like a sci-fi cheapie of the Atomic Age, right? Something that Roger Corman would’ve outlined (if not scripted) during a bowel movement? The actual film’s title card drops all but those last two words — not much of an improvement, yet the movie is stronger than any moniker with which it’s saddled.

Morningside is a sleepy (and fictional) town in New Jersey shaken wide awake by a mysterious murder that soon escalates into a string of them — the work of a robed serial killer, keeping Sheriff Tom Faulk (Robert Pralgo, The Collection) and Deputy Klara Austin (B-movie queen Tiffany Shepis, who doesn’t even have to remove a stitch!) busy as those proverbial bees. Said slasher wears one of the silliest costumes this subgenre has ever seen: what looks like a papier-mâché Mardi Gras mask that’s been Bedazzled and sports an overbite so pronounced, any decent orthodontist would go ahead and put a downpayment on that yacht he’s been eyeing.

This thriller being director Chris Ethridge’s long-form debut, seams show — sometimes because a boom mike’s reflection can be seen, sometimes because his direction calls too much attention to itself. And honestly, the killings feel almost secondary, because he and screenwriter Jayson Palmer (Idiots Are Us) do a good job of setting up Sheriff Tom’s world. Dreary though it may be, the lawman’s daily routine with the townsfolk is interesting enough — and Pralgo and Shepis’ performances that damned great — that for several minutes, I genuinely forgot a cult-worshipping killer even was involved.

In other words, if Morningside Monster were just a low-key episode of Cops dealing with nothing more than the drunk and disorderly, I wouldn’t have minded. Heck, it might even be better that way, no matter how many circular handsaws may be missed. —Rod Lott

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Read the original review in Exploitation Retrospect: The Journal of Junk Culture & Fringe Media #53

Security guard Steve Belmont (Eli Rich, The Jigsaw Murders) possesses MurderLust in his heart. The Sunday school teacher has a hobby of hiring hookers, but he only gets his rocks off by strangling them. Then he dumps their dead bodies off a desert cliff, eventually earning him the TV-news nickname of “the Mojave Murderer” — once the cops discover the spot, nine corpses (and untold vultures and flies) later. Steve seems not too terribly anxious about this development; he has bigger worries in ditching his check-seeking landlord.

From the five-time team of director Donald M. Jones and writer/producer James C. Lane (Housewife from Hell), MurderLust meanders around with little aim, yet, like Steve himself, acts like it knows what it’s doing. Steve appears to make moves toward normalcy, as he accepts a janitorial job at the grocery store run by his uptight cousin (Dennis Gannon, Jones/Lane’s Evil Acts) and romances a super-cute blonde (Rochelle Taylor) from church … but only because he was thwarted in killing her first.

While they know not of Steve-o’s predilection for prostitutes, we sure do, and the joy of the film is in seeing him somehow pull off this charade while acting like a grade-A asshole to damn near everybody. Rich gives a real performance here, if not a terribly nuanced one — certainly stronger than the average VHS shocker ever asked for or deserved. Primarily (but not exclusively) for that reason, MurderLust is an above-average example of its kind: a lumbering, semi-lovable goof of a movie that keeps most of its carnage out of sight and its purpose to entertain on the cheap thoroughly in check. —Rod Lott

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