The mouthful I've used to title this piece is the best condensation of Paramount Digital Entertainment's Circle of Eight. The 83-minute feature released on DVD last week is a compilation/re-edit of the Mountain Dew-sponsored, 5-minute webisodes posted exclusively to MySpace last fall.

The whole thing is an ultra-short-attention span horror thriller that probably worked better in the bite-sized chunks it was originally served up in. I was a bit lost at first until I paused it and looked into the MySpace page, which is definitely a part of the experience. The Mountain Dew-sponsored bits have all been removed from the video itself, since they were built into the Flash video versions that were posted online.

A young woman moves into a cursed/haunted building and starts seeing things. Shit gets real and then it gets out of control. It's nightmarish, hallucinatory, blah-blah-blah. DJ Qualls is the only immediately recognizable member of the cast. He plays the "creepy geek with a video camera". Extras include a behind-the-scenes, an on-location featurette, and a Day in the Life of a P.A. piece. The DVD edition does a good job of giving you a glance at how these tiny-portion, "webisodic" digital features come together. The whole feature isn't terribly interesting, but the nuts and bolts of how it was designed are reasonably diverting. Ah yes, Mark Mothersbaugh, of all people, did the music.