“They’re watching you, they’re watching you,” creeps the stripped-down cover of Hall & Oates’ “Private Eyes” accompanying the official trailer for James Ponsoldt’s (The End Of The Tour) futuristic thriller The Circle. Emma Watson’s character, Mae, is working a thankless office job as some kind of collection agent when she is hired by the most powerful social media company in the world, The Circle, whose Steve Jobs-like founder (Tom Hanks) believes in the “perfectibility of human beings” and that the right tech company can end hunger and disease. Despite The Circle’s slick surface and ambitious goals, all is not well, of course, and conflict arises when the surveillance-happy Circle oversteps into Mae’s life, bringing up questions of privacy and ethics.
The film, set in the near future, is an adaptation of Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel of the same name, and also stars Boyhood’s Ellar Coltrane as Mae’s boyfriend and The Force Awakens’ John Boyega as her co-worker, who, not unlike his Stormtrooper-who-makes-good Star Wars character, might have a change of heart regarding his employer’s mission.
The Circle will appear in theaters April 28.