Full Circle (US Title, The Haunting of Julia) was adapted from Peter Straub's 1975 novel Julia. The book was his first to deal with the supernatural. The story concerns Julia Lofting (Mia Farrow), an independently wealthy woman married to the cold and overbearing Magnus (Keir Dullea). The sudden and horrific death of the couple's nine-year-old daughter Kate (played by a young Sophie Ward) leads Julia to leave Magnus and acquire a large, old house of her own in London. This precipitates a series of events that culminate in a final, bleak revelation.
The film absolutely exudes Seventies Britishness, not least in the person of Tom Conti as Julia's friend Mark, an antique dealer with a classic footballer's haircut and flared jeans. Contie is just one of a dozen or so familiar faces who appear. Sometimes they are glimpsed in brief scenes - Peter Sallis as a concerned neighbour, Nigel Havers as a smarmy estate agent - but there are also some memorable cameos by the likes of Damaris Hayman (of Doctor Who 'The Daemons' fame) and Jill Bennet as Julia's manipulative sister-in-law.
The story follows the familiar detective story format, with the haunting established, questions about its purpose and the ghost's identity. Horror comes with a series of deaths as Julia peels back layers of mystery and deceit. There are some plot holes and ambiguities, but overall it works well. The slow pace was a problem at the time, with both critics and audiences, but I found it sufficiently engaging. It is not as good as Ghost Story, the better-known Straub adaptation, but it is far from a failure.
At the time of writing Full Circle is on Amazon Prime. And here are some other ghost stories I've talked about that feature mother-child relationships as their main plot drivers.
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