Circle

Fifty people awaken in a darkened room arranged on two concentric circles around a black dome. Any attempt to move or touch others triggers alarms and a deadly beam that kills those who break formation. A calm man tries to soothe the panic, but the beam kills him mid sentence, setting the tone for the room's deadly game.

As fear grows, the room reveals a brutal voting mechanism: participants can vote for who dies using hand gestures, while arrows on the floor show each person's own vote but hide the others'. Every two minutes another person dies, forcing them to weigh loyalty, bias, and strategy under pressure. The group tries to boycott the process, but the executions continue regardless of their attempts.

A college student suggests stalling by agreeing in advance to eliminate the elderly in upcoming rounds, hoping for a more humane selection. Eric recalls his own abduction story, including fleeing Los Angeles and waking in a red room with others, hinting at aliens behind the ordeal. An older man beside him claims he has seen aliens too, but the others dismiss him and he is killed.

The student targets a 52-year-old cancer survivor, provoking objections that she is not elderly enough to justify removal. The vote proceeds and the woman is killed, illustrating how prejudice and fear are shaping who dies. The room's veneer of impartiality collapses under personal agendas.

People begin recognizing others they thought they knew, with a man identifying the woman beside him as his wife and another admitting an affair with the doctor. A tattooed man is eliminated after he confesses to a history of domestic violence, showing how past sins are used against participants. These revelations deepen paranoia as the game reveals intimate connections among captives.

After several minority deaths, an African-American man argues that the process has become racist. The debate rages on, but when a cop among them launches a racist tirade, he is selected next, exposing the brutal arbitrariness of the mechanism. The clash underscores how identities used to separate people become the reasons they die.

They experiment with the voting rules, discovering that self-votes are forbidden and that they can try to give one vote to every person. A man secretly receives a second vote for a pregnant woman, triggering a tie in the runoff, and Eric votes for that man; the result is a death, showing how even small tactics can alter outcomes. The death emphasizes how fragile fairness remains inside the game.

To buy time for consideration, several captives take actions that sidestep the rules. An atheist taunts the theists who praise the volunteers' faith, and though he is briefly spared, he is killed after mocking a girl about her boss paying for her breast enlargement. The sequence demonstrates how personal attacks become lethal tools in the game.

A homophobic lawyer targets a lesbian, triggering his own removal as the vote lands on him. The death underscores how prejudice makes someone a target, and how the system punishes bigotry in unpredictable ways.

The group splits into two factions: Eric's bloc, led by a Marine and a one-armed man, argues for sacrifice to protect a pregnant woman and a little girl; the other bloc, led by a bearded man and a banker, wants to eliminate perceived threats immediately and denies special protections. The tension escalates when a Spanish translator is eliminated, and a tie arises between a Hispanic immigrant and the little girl, prompting the bearded man to sacrifice himself to preserve his side.

The husband among the captives is forced to vote with Eric's faction after the others threaten to eliminate his wife. During interrogation, the couple admit they concocted their relationship to gain favor, and the husband is eliminated as a result. The manipulation reveals how deception fuels the death game.

Eric's faction sustains heavy losses but manages to wipe out the opposing group, leaving only Eric, the pregnant woman, the little girl, and a silent man who has never voted. The silent man is eliminated, tightening the noose around the remaining players. The survivors confront the grim realization that the game will demand a final, tragic sacrifice.

In the endgame, Eric and the girl agree to sacrifice themselves, but when the girl dies by suicide, Eric makes a last-second vote to kill the pregnant woman instead. He soon learns that the unborn child counts as a person, so he votes to kill the child. He wakes up in Los Angeles, joining a community of children and pregnant women watching a fleet of alien ships hover over the city, suggesting humanity has been studied for a cosmic experiment.