The Circle (2017): A Paradoxically Sinister Adaptation Anonymous College

The statement that “[The Circle is] not a perfect piece of cinema” (Sydell) can be considered a gross understatement. The film “met with derisive reviews” (White, May 2017) even “bombing in its first week of release” (White, May 2017) “gross[ing] just $20 million at the US box office” (White, June 2017) and was subsequently “quietly dumped on Netflix” (White, June 2017). This is startling given its “star-studded cast” (Vincent) but more importantly, the success of its original source: “Dave Egger’s novel of the same title” (Walsh). Reviews provide a consensus of the novel as sinister, “creepily plausible” (Sydell) and “troubling” (Bosman et al). So much so, that Michele Filgate wrote an essay titled ‘Dave Eggers Made Me Quit Twitter’ “about her experience swearing off social media for a week, an experiment prompted by the unsettling feeling the book produced” (Bosman et al). If the novel had such an impact, why did the film flop so fantastically? Perhaps, the main reason why this adaptation failed abysmally was because it missed the point, abysmally. Atwood warns the reader not to “look to The Circle for Chekhovian nuance”. Instead, “what fuels this novel is its thunderbolt of an idea” (Nazaryan) that in our seemingly innocent...