Hacker Cinema
Circle
2015 · Film · 86 min
Directed by Aaron Hann, Mario Miscione
HorrorScience FictionMysteryThriller
In a massive, mysterious chamber, fifty strangers awaken to find themselves trapped with no memory of how they got there. Organized in an inward-facing circle and unable to move, they quickly learn that every two minutes, one of them must die…executed by a strange device in the center of the room.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I happen to love certain niche movie genres, which happens to include "dinner party movies". Feel free to list some recommendations, if you like "people talk in a room" movies.
Some of my favories:
Coherence (scifi) Garden Party (sleazy young adult Los Angeles drama) Murder Party (low budget horror comedy) How English sounds to non-English speakers (youtube) Circle 2015 (scifi)
I'm reminded of the experiments where camp kids were randomly given blue and red shirts, and it took them less than an hour to form in-group/out-group dynamics and tribal loyalty based on shirts alone.
The thing is, from a game-theoretic standpoint, tribal loyalty is a Schelling focus [0]: your calculation about what alliance(s) to invest in, are inherently influenced by your calculations of the calculations of others. What defines the tribal boundary can be utterly non-sensical (from the objective viewpoint of a proverbial Martian), yet still be a rational choice from the perspective of each individual participant.
I'm also reminded of the Netflix b-movie "Circle" [1]: a group of fifty people are forced to vote every two minutes on which of them will be killed (if they refuse, someone is killed at random). At first, they decide to buy time to think, by starting with older people who are closer to the grave; but the older crowd bands together in self-defense, creating a two-party system of old-vs-young. As the headcount shrinks, new rifts and coalitions emerge; some organic, some arbitrary. It's a brilliant thought experiment despite being terrible as a film. :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_(2015_film)