The Circle

Imagine walking into a job interview where the HR representative already knows your favorite flavor of low-fat yogurt and exactly how many steps you took on your hike last Saturday. In 2017, The Circle arrived in theaters looking like a sleek, prestige thriller designed to make us all throw our smartphones into the nearest river. It had the pedigree: a screenplay co-written by Dave Eggers (who wrote the bestselling source novel) and James Ponsoldt (the director behind the wonderfully human The Spectacular Now), and a cast that felt like a Hollywood fever dream. You had Emma Watson fresh off the Harry Potter stratosphere and Tom Hanks—the world’s most trusted man—playing a tech mogul who was definitely not a parody of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

But here we are, a few years deep into the post-pandemic era, and The Circle has transitioned into a strange kind of digital artifact. It’s a film that failed to ignite the box office but has found a second life among tech-skeptics and "hate-watch" aficionados who find its clunky, heavy-handed warnings about privacy accidentally hilarious. I watched this again recently while my neighbor was power-washing his driveway for three hours, and the rhythmic, mindless drone of the water actually provided a better soundtrack for the film’s sterile aesthetic than anything Danny Elfman composed for the score.

The Gospel of Total Transparency

The story follows Mae Holland (Emma Watson), a young woman stuck in a soul-crushing cubicle job until her well-connected friend Annie (Karen Gillan, who gives us some of the only genuine emotional beats in the movie) lands her a gig at The Circle. It’s the world’s most powerful social media and tech company, a sprawling campus of glass, steel, and forced fun. Think Google, but with more cultish mandatory mixers.

Mae is quickly seduced by the "transparency" gospel preached by Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks). Bailey’s big idea is SeeChange: marble-sized cameras that can be placed anywhere, allowing for total global surveillance. "Knowing is good," he tells a cheering crowd. "Knowing everything is better." Soon, Mae is "going transparent," wearing a camera 24/7 for millions of followers, while her luddite friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane, the kid from Boyhood) and her ailing father (Bill Paxton, in his final film role) represent the "boring" old world of privacy and dignity.

The problem is that the film has all the urgency of a LinkedIn notification. It wants to be a terrifying look at the death of the private self, but it often feels like a series of HR training videos that went rogue. Tom Hanks is effortlessly charismatic, which is the point, but watching him play a villain is like watching a Golden Retriever try to growl—you know he’s trying, but you still want to pet him.

A Cult of Digital Awkwardness

Why does this film qualify for the Popcornizer "Cult" lens? Because it’s one of those rare big-budget projects that is fundamentally misunderstood by its own creators. While it tries to be a serious drama, it’s actually a campy masterpiece of tech-paranoia. The scenes where Mae is bombarded by floating social media bubbles—people "Zinging" her with comments like "You go girl!" or "Love the outfit!"—have aged into a hilarious parody of how older screenwriters think the internet looks.

The cult following for The Circle doesn't come from people who think it's a masterpiece; it comes from the tech workers and privacy nerds who treat it as a comedy. There are 5-7 quirky details that make the production as interesting as the film itself:

1. The film sat on a shelf for nearly two years. It finished filming in 2015 but wasn't released until 2017, which is a lifetime in "tech years." 2. John Boyega plays Ty Lafitte, the disillusioned creator of the Circle’s OS, but his character is so drastically sidelined that he feels like he wandered in from a completely different, much better movie. 3. The ending was significantly altered from Dave Eggers' novel. In the book, the conclusion is a bleak, chilling surrender to the machine. The movie tries for a "triumphant" twist that actually makes Mae look like a terrifying narcissist. 4. Real-life tech campuses were used for filming, including the "Golden State" feel of Southern California, making the film look like a $110 million Apple commercial. 5. Patton Oswalt plays the "enforcer" Tom Stenton, and his performance is so delightfully sinister that you wish the movie was just about him firing people for not sharing their weekend plans.

The Privacy Paradox

As a contemporary viewer, the most fascinating thing about The Circle is how its "nightmare" scenarios have just become... life. In 2017, the idea of a camera in every corner was a threat. In the current era of Ring doorbells and TikTok creators filming strangers in grocery stores for "clout," the movie feels less like a warning and more like a documentary of how we lost the war.

Emma Watson does her best with a character who is remarkably difficult to like. Mae isn't a victim; she's a true believer who throws her friends and family under the bus for "likes." If you view the film as a character study of a person losing their soul to an algorithm, it’s almost effective. But as a thriller, it lacks teeth. It’s a drama that refuses to get its hands dirty, opting for a clean, sterilized version of a digital dystopia.

Ultimately, The Circle is a fascinator. It’s a snapshot of a moment when Hollywood was desperate to say something profound about social media but couldn't quite stop staring at its own reflection. It’s worth a watch for the sheer star power and the unintentional comedy of its "high-tech" visuals, but don't expect it to change your data privacy settings. It’s a film that asks us to look closer, only to realize there’s not much behind the glass.