The movie is lifted above the average by a fine performance by Mrs. Farrow, who is deeply moving as a mother devastated by loss and guilt. Her performance turns the movie into a chillingly accurate portrayal of grief and loneliness : here is a woman whose life has turned into a desert, complete with maddening mirages.
If one subtracts Mrs. Farrow from the movie, then "Full Circle" becomes a well-crafted horror movie of the more subtle and psychological kind : it's pretty decent, but nothing stratospheric.
Its credibility was somewhat undermined by the remarkable ease with which the protagonist succeeded in piecing together a long-buried story of woe : she constantly meets the right people pointing in the right direction, at the right moment. In my experience, people who try to reconstruct old stories, especially old stories involving crime and injustice, are more likely to meet interlocutors threatening to flatten their faces with the aid of a tire iron. And if they do happen upon a benevolent and helpful witness, they'll soon discover that human memory is as riddled with holes as a slice of Swiss cheese. ("Yes, I remember Mrs. Watson from Number 18, she had three sons - no wait, two sons and a daughter, the little daughter had infantile cancer, she died in 1957 or 1960, the poor kid was killed in a car accident, her eldest brother was called Shirley and he became a policeman after his two sisters died in an airplane disaster in the Belgian Congo. Mr. Watson was a criminal - he once tried to kill the Queen with a cauliflower - but Mrs. Watson was a decent Christian woman, she kept all five of her sons on the straight and narrow. Nowadays they all live in Independence Street, with the exception of Pamela Snowdon, who married a Greek astronaut.")
Still, it's a pleasure to watch a movie which relies on a careful creation of an uncanny atmosphere, rather than on acres of gore.
If one subtracts Mrs. Farrow from the movie, then "Full Circle" becomes a well-crafted horror movie of the more subtle and psychological kind : it's pretty decent, but nothing stratospheric.
Its credibility was somewhat undermined by the remarkable ease with which the protagonist succeeded in piecing together a long-buried story of woe : she constantly meets the right people pointing in the right direction, at the right moment. In my experience, people who try to reconstruct old stories, especially old stories involving crime and injustice, are more likely to meet interlocutors threatening to flatten their faces with the aid of a tire iron. And if they do happen upon a benevolent and helpful witness, they'll soon discover that human memory is as riddled with holes as a slice of Swiss cheese. ("Yes, I remember Mrs. Watson from Number 18, she had three sons - no wait, two sons and a daughter, the little daughter had infantile cancer, she died in 1957 or 1960, the poor kid was killed in a car accident, her eldest brother was called Shirley and he became a policeman after his two sisters died in an airplane disaster in the Belgian Congo. Mr. Watson was a criminal - he once tried to kill the Queen with a cauliflower - but Mrs. Watson was a decent Christian woman, she kept all five of her sons on the straight and narrow. Nowadays they all live in Independence Street, with the exception of Pamela Snowdon, who married a Greek astronaut.")
Still, it's a pleasure to watch a movie which relies on a careful creation of an uncanny atmosphere, rather than on acres of gore.