Reviews
[Review] “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” Turns You Into the Ultimate Puppet Master…and Puppet
“Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” constructs an overwhelming interactive movie experience to tell a trippy parable about free will and alternate realities.
“Wrong path, mate.”
Black Mirror is a series that loves to dissect, reconstruct, and rewrite reality, which it’s done with startling clarity in the past. The idea of doing an interactive episode of Black Mirror plays right into the show’s central themes and feels like an inspired evolution of what the show is capable of, rather than some gimmicky event to gain eyeballs. Netflix has toyed with this “choose your own adventure” structure in the past with kid-friendly series like Minecraft: Story Mode, Stretch Armstrong, and Puss and Boots, and even HBO got into the game last year with Steven Soderbergh’s vastly underseen Mosaic, but this is one of the first applications of the concept where it feels truly natural and fundamental to the story that’s being told.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has viewers do exactly what Stefan wants the players of “Bandersnatch” to do, but it’s also what he, in turn, is obliviously caught up in himself. This structure may irritate some viewers as much as it may excite others, but it’s the sort of thing that you can casually participate in or obsess over as the branching options at your disposal continue to grow. Do you want Frosties or Sugar Loops for breakfast? Should you bury your victim, or would it be more useful to chop them up? Do you go down a wormhole where Stefan is a clinical guinea pig or just a paranoid programmer? That is the joy and the anxiety of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which translates into an extremely addictive and satisfying experience.
Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) is a computer programmer who’s anxious to begin work on his passion project, an ambitious video game called “Bandersnatch,” which is an adaptation of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book of the same name. When initial reviews of his game are a disaster, he becomes determined to try again, rewrite history, and finally nail this project. What’s more surprising is when it appears that he is actually able to relive these experiences, as if he’s some character in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. He’s a simple, focused kid who misses his mother and struggles with certain ailments, but is still mostly normal, albeit a tad obsessive. He’s in therapy to try to manage such thoughts, as well as this growing suspicion that he’s no longer in control of his own decisions.
The video game “Bandersnatch” was actually teased back in the episode “Playtest” as a game from 1984 that eventually went unreleased. Furthermore, “Bandersnatch” was actually supposed to be a real video game back in the ‘80s. It was developed by Imagine Software as a game-changing piece of gaming for the ZX Spectrum. Imagine faced financial difficulties and the title never came to life, but clearly, Charlie Brooker and his Black Mirror crew want to have some fun with these events from history and explore what really stopped “Bandersnatch” from release.
Bandersnatch focuses on Stefan’s struggles with his looming deadline, as well as his antagonistic relationship with his father and his desire to be closer with fellow Tuckersoft programmer, Colin (Will Poulter). Paranoia begins to set in for Stefan and eventually grows to insurmountable levels as he fails to be able to distinguish what is real anymore. The episode finds plenty of inspired ways to get into discussions about alternate realities, fate, and butterfly effects, whether it’s lucid rambles over hallucinogens, structured discussions through therapy, or documentaries on eccentric authors. We’re all part of the cosmic flowchart. It’s a skilled way to turn the subtext into text without being obnoxious about it.
The best part of this experiment is how much Black Mirror: Bandersnatch truly takes advantage of the “alternates realities” and choosing your destiny idea. The episode explores how even something like Pac-Man is deeply layered and coded where every choice has consequences. A video game is a smart metaphor for fate and Bandersnatch works as one big macrocosm for that concept.
The episode digs into the eerie premise that someone else is making your decisions for you, that you’re not in control of your own life, and that you’re just meant to be someone else’s entertainment. At one point Stefan consciously tries to will his body to avoid doing what you’ve selected it to do and he literally asks, “Who’s doing this to me?” You even have the option to respond with “Netflix.” Bandersnatch is delightfully meta when it wants to be (and one ending particularly goes for it in this department). Did you feel like you were always making the wrong choices? That’s part of the point. You can even choose to play chaotically and let time run out on each choice so the decision gets made for you!
Bandersnatch presents a surreal, engaging story, but it’s really just incredible to marvel at how much freedom the narrative provides, especially when ending characters’ lives gets put on the table. At the same time, the episode explicitly mocks the illusion of choice that it gives you. Just like Stefan hasn’t programmed paths for all of the routes in “Bandersnatch,” it’s the same here, but it tricks you into thinking that you’re responsible for all of this. Bandersnatch carefully leads you to where it wants you to go while making you think that you have free will.
As soon as you make a decision, you’ll moan over the one that you didn’t take and what could have happened, just like in life itself. At the same time, the narrative continually tells Stefan that the past can’t be changed or that hindsight isn’t a superpower, whereas the episode pushes quite a different ideology with its implementation. It’s brilliant and still results in a glorious scavenger hunt of a story. I’ve no doubt many people will spend their entire day searching the episode for more secrets and paths. I imagine that gamers will also especially take to this installment as it does feel like a game more than it does a film or piece of television, in many respects.
As Bandersnatch goes on, Stefan and the viewer both go deeper down this rabbit hole and the concern over the state of his game and his mind escalates. For some people, the enjoyment of this adventure will come down to its conclusion (as is the case with so many Black Mirror episodes), but Bandersnatch explicitly tells its audience, “It’s not about the ending. The ending is immaterial. It’s about the decisions you made to get there”. So while there are five “main” endings to this story (and others where you die or need to go back because a “poor” decision is made), that’s not what it wants you to fixate on. The fun here is in seeing people already debate on what the “true” ending is and how much of this story they’ve actually cracked. You’ll be as determined to “win” here as Stefan is to get a perfect score on his game.
Part of the appeal of Bandersnatch will be inevitably “playing” again to yield a different set of results or just talking to your friends about their decisions and how their version of events ended. The five major conclusions cover a gamut of options in response to the reception of Stefan’s game as well as his own fate, but there’s definitely one route that feels the most like Black Mirror’s typical bleak, bittersweet finish. There’s also one ending that’s considerably bonkers and goes off the rails in what may be one of the most meta sequences of 2018. It’s great to see the show throw some less serious “joke endings” into the mix. They’re incredible examples of how to properly use this format as cleverly as possible. It’s as post-modern as it gets.
The installment isn’t perfect and it may present a story that’s technically thinner than other episodes, but the level of ambition here is incredible. Some may get lost in whether they’re making the decisions that they’d make or the choices that they think the story is supposed to naturally go down, but that mental schism is part of the point here. Just like the episode tells you, it’s about the decisions, not the ending.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a major risk, but it’s one that absolutely pays off. It’s insane to think about the wealth of content that’s in this (over 150 minutes of footage, 250 segments, and “trillions of permutations”) and its sheer attention to detail (like when you realize what the dog is digging for in the yard, the significance of the father’s ashtray, or the prevalence of the therapist’s phone number), and that this kind of experiment is not only successful, but challenges the form in a genuinely exciting way. For all of these reasons, this completely deserves a full score and I can’t wait to hear about all of the secrets that we continue to find in this.
“Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” is now available on Netflix.
Killer shark movies seem to be riding high this year, more in quantity than quality, but still – they’re one of the most ubiquitous subgenres in horror right now. The latest entry comes from Jesse V. Johnson, an established action director dipping his toe into the realm of animal attack cinema for the first time (despite what the titles of his films Savage Dog and White Elephant might suggest). Above & Below features some very hungry sharks alongside a substantial body count, but it’s some very bad men who rack up most of the kills.
A group of friends is enjoying a fun vacation in Mexico when the screw-up of the bunch, Kyle (Diego Llinas), brings them an offer they can’t refuse. They’re being treated to an exclusive cage diving trip on a big, beautiful, luxury power catamaran with a guarantee of seeing some sharks up close. Kyle’s sister, Tatiana (Laura Marano), is hesitant, but she’s overruled by her boyfriend TJ (Donncha Tynan), and their couple friends, Kayle (Christina Ochoa) and Danny (Ryan Bertroche).
Should be fun, why not, what could go wrong, and so on, but then a pair of quiet heavies (Louis Mandylor, Jess Liaudin) with matching Louis Vuitton bags join the passenger list. And then another boat joins them at sea, and three armed men (including a terrifically entertaining Antonio Banderas) climb aboard. And then those hungry sharks aren’t hungry for long.
Like the recent Dangerous Animals and The Bay, Johnson’s Above & Below takes the wise tact of casting its sharks as an underlying threat instead of the main obstacle. They’re both dangerous and deadly when encountered, but the film blends its genre conventions to zero in on mad, greedy, and murderous humans as the true antagonists. It’s a good thing, too, as the actors bringing those villains to life give the film’s best, most engaging performances.
Writer Anthony Steven Giordano doesn’t give this group of friends much to work with – Kyle is a troublemaker, and Tatiana is planning to break up with TJ, but there’s otherwise very little at play between them in regard to drama or depth. The performances, while mostly competent, match that level of detail, and it’s instead the bad guys who find the most to play with as both characters and performers.
Mandylor carries the familiar but fun bulldog persona he’s mastered through a few earlier films with Johnson (including The Debt Collector and its sequel), and his Martin is the villainous loose cannon equivalent of Kyle’s less harmful but more obnoxious pain in the ass. It’s Kyle’s mistake that lands his friends on this boat, but it’s Martin’s error in judgment that signs nearly everyone’s death warrant. Liaudin has the less showier role of the pair as Garrison, but there’s a charismatic gentility about him running in interesting contrast to his muscular frame and cauliflower ears.
It’s Banderas’ Carlos, though, who steals the show in Above & Below and makes it clear why it’s often worth bringing a name talent into the mix for these direct-to-video genre pictures. (That said, they probably should have bumped his paycheck a little bit higher so they didn’t have to use painfully obvious stand-ins when his character is filmed from behind.) He plays the film’s big bad with a joyous sense of life that he can turn on a dime into abject cruelty. It’s fun to watch, and it adds an entertaining bit of craziness into some otherwise serious and occasionally meandering beats.
Less successful, and the film’s biggest issue on the performance front, is Marano’s efforts, particularly when Tatiana’s talking underwater. The SCUBA helmets are wired so divers can talk to each other, and while the scenes are actually shot underwater (and look good as a result), the dialogue performances were clearly recorded later. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but Marano’s recording booth performance never matches or even approaches the intensity of the underwater scenes she’s voicing – bodies are falling around her, sharks are taking bites, and she sounds like she’s lounging in the bathtub on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t get much more convincing once she’s back topside, but the script is equally to blame on that count.
Still, flat performance aside, Johnson knows how to craft thrills and suspense infused with character and even the smallest of action beats. Part of the film sees criminal threats on board the boat and shark dangers below, and he cuts between them while rarely losing their sense of tension. The script also succeeds at keeping viewers guessing as to who will survive the excursion, and that’s no small feat for these kinds of films.
While stunts and squibs keep things somewhat lively above the water, Johnson and friends find some solid set pieces below the surface too. The sharks are CG creations, but they look pretty good – it’s really only the CG blood that screams “fake!” every time it appears – and deliver minor thrills as they glide out of the shadows to take a bite or do a quick drive-by. Characters are in a shark cage that’s been dropped to the ocean floor, and as their air tanks run low, they’re forced to exit the cage and retrieve air from the dead, leading to some fun interactions with chewed-upon dummy corpses. One encounter involving Tatiana, Martin, and a Great White shark is a real high point of creativity and execution.
The film is set in Mexico but filmed in Bulgaria and the Canary Islands. Land sequences are limited enough that you probably won’t even notice, and the bulk of the film is convincing with its offshore setting. Similarly, the underwater filming – presumably in a tank – adds an additional layer to the illusion so that you feel the dangerous isolation of it all.
At the end of the day, it’s Johnson’s direction and the performances by Banderas, Mandylor, and Liaudin that might make Above & Below worth your time. The script teases a recurrent theme about the dangerous outcome of keeping secrets, but as with the characters and anything resembling logic, it ultimately does nothing with it. Johnson and his bad guys fight to keep it all afloat, but a better script could have given them even more to work with. Of course, no one comes to these movies for the script anyway, but you’ll still wish there was far more meat on its bones.
Above & Below swims into select theaters today, July 29.
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