How Bad Can Movies Be?: “The Open House” and “The Circle”

         I just finished watching the Netflix film “The Open House.” One thing good to report is that it is only an hour and thirty-seven minutes long. The plot: There's this financially strapped family made up of dad, mom and son. Dad gets run down by a car that is speeding in an alley. Mom now can’t afford the mortgage. Mom’s rather odd sister says use our house in the California mountains, but remember it is for sale so you’ll have to leave during open houses. They move there and meet a weird old woman at the local store. What crap might she be foretelling?  Got me.  They get to the house. Weird things happen. No reason. Uninteresting. Idiotic. Things get bad for mom, son.  There one friend gets his throat slit Then things get really bad for mom and son. I mean really bad. The Awful Ending all because of the open house?  I don't know.  There's no purpose. No reason. Dare I say, no logical motivation. It is a movie that shouts out “why was I ever made?” Why did you watch it, Greg? Because I am a sucker for scary movies. They can even be bad scary movies. But they must be bad/good! This was just plain bad/bad!

       Now “The Circle,” available on Amazon Prime, stars A-list talents Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. When those two watched the finished film they helped create, they must have run screaming from the screening.  It is the embarrassingly terrible tale of a sweet, bright young woman (Emma) who takes a job at vast tech/social media company run by a Steve Jobs-like, super-cool CEO (Tom).  The company (The Circle) is manufacturing a mini-cam system which will keep an eye on every single person in the world. No more bad people because everyone is traceable with facial recognition in the mini-cams. Pretty soon governments are requiring their citizens to wear these cams. No more crime. Everyone votes. Yada! Yada! And sweet, bright Emma, rather than being the hero that brings this ridiculous idea down, champions it. Ludicrously she goes from data enterer to the new CEO of the company. Two characters who were introduced early seem to be the ones that will show her the error of her ways. Nope! They both just disappear. Emma and the Circle take over the world.  There are two embarrassingly bad scenes. One when Emma’s mom and dad are caught in a sad sex scene involving a pump that is seen by the whole world, and two, the final scene, which made me want to shout, “Emma, fall out of that kayak and sink!"  When I finished watching "The Circle," I considered going back and watching the last half hour, thinking I had missed something that would give some logic to this blundering, tiny brained, stegosaurus of a movie. But I couldn’t stand the thought of it.