Credit: Netflix

Alejandro Lozano’s Inside the Circle, AKA El círculo, on Netflix builds an intriguing, mysteriously murderous premise around four lifelong friends whose lives are upended in the aftermath of the grisly murder of popular actor Pamela Dosantos.

The Mexican crime thriller centres on Tomás, Amelia, Jaime, and Mario, a close-knit group of childhood friends with seemingly no secrets. They come from different walks of life – Tomás, a hapless journalist; Amelia, an on-the-rise politician; Mario, a high school teacher; and Jaime, the rich CEO of a private intelligence and security company. Then, what pulls them all into the life-and-death conspiracy that follows?

After Pamela’s controversial death, Tomás casually posts a video of the actor’s last known appearance after receiving a tip from her trusted informant, Villanueva, unaware that she was actually clicked while entering the house of a powerful military general, Escolta Salazar, the national secretary of defence. While that’s an unlikely enemy to make in the first place, Tomás soon realises the cost of the post.

With Salazar on a mission to subdue the buzz about his connections to Pamela, some intruders soon break into Tomás’s house to harass him. To make things worse, Villanueva also goes missing. As Tomás turns to his friends for support, Amelia and Mario back him up, but Jamie seems somewhat reluctant, fearing the trouble that might follow. So, do they eventually track down the killer of Pamela?

Who killed Pamela in Inside the Circle?

The threat doesn’t stay restricted to Tomás’s household, as his friends are soon attacked by armed men, later identified in Inside the Circle, the Mexican crime thriller, as cartel members. Although they make it out alive, Amelia confronts a new setback, with her party intending to leverage the attack on her to pass a bill to boost military funding – a proposal she strongly opposes. With Amelia risking her career, Mario is not far behind.

Seeking help from his daughter Viri, he tries to dig deep into Pamela’s social media imprint with the help of her hacker friend. Meanwhile, Mario also develops a close bond with Pamela’s stylist, Carmen, who, to everyone’s surprise, reveal a crate full of encrypted tapes that have several recordings of Pamela’s links with powerful men, including Salazar and Jaime’s father, a mogul in the security industry.

Soon after the discovery, Viri’s hacker friend is killed, and she, alongside Tomás’s daughter Jime, are kidnapped, forcing the friends on a race against time. But when Jaime tracks down the location of the kidnappers, and Tomás decides to go public, viewers finally come close to the central mystery surrounding the killer’s identity.

It turns out that Pamela’s killer is, indeed, someone from inside the circle, Jamie, who had both personal and professional motives for his actions. Pamela was a spy for the Northern Cartel and an important player in his political bets. Since he already knew about her connections with Salazar and her father, he tortured and murdered her to make it look like one of the cartel killings.

In fact, Jaime himself tipped off Tomás, impersonating his informant, to corner Salazar and foil his father. But he never expected Tomás and his friends to dive so deep into the investigation, since he only wanted him to pass the message. So, all his attempts to make Tomás drop the case finally make sense.