We don’t really do any movie reviews on NullTX, but as I am a huge fan of Black Mirror I had to write a review about the latest release called Bandersnatch. It first aired last night on Netflix and if you haven’t seen it I highly suggest you stop reading right now and check it out.
Have you ever read one of those “choose your own adventure” books? This is exactly that but a movie version. You get to choose your own plot line based on the decisions you make in the movie. There will be spoilers in this review so… Spoiler Alert!
Being a big fan of Black Mirror I had high expectations for Bandersnatch before I even started watching it. The first few choices that are presented to you are rather trivial, one being to choose what kind of cereal the main character will have for breakfast.
As the movie progresses the choices you make become more important. You get to decide whether to work on a project with a team or by yourself, whether to follow one person or another. One notable choice after the main character murdered his dad was whether to bury the body or to chop it up in pieces, each leading to a separate outcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0xWpBYlNM
I was a huge fan of being presented with big important choices that really swayed the plot line. However, I didn’t like the gimmicky choices such as choosing what music your character listens to. Some choices seemed to not have any effect on the plot line while others were the same choice but worded differently. For example, in one case the options were “Yes” and “Fuck Yeah” – didn’t seem like much of a choice there. In other cases, the prompt came up but it only had a single choice available. That begs the question of why it was necessary to interrupt the viewer in the first place. There might be a hidden easter egg that requires all the correct choices, we will have to wait and find out.
While the amount of choices did get annoying at one point, after you go through a plot line or when you make a wrong choice that ends the plot line prematurely, Netflix gives you an option to go back and change your choice. That was quite a unique concept that made me go back and revisit other choices. While Netflix shows a length of an hour and thirty minutes for Bandersnatch, I easily spent over 2 hours going through different endings.
Overall I would give Bandersnatch a solid 4/5 rating. It could have used less prompts for choices and I felt like some of the choices didn’t really have a true impact on the plot line. However, overall the story and the concept definitely makes for an awesome viewing experience. If you haven’t yet I highly recommend you check it out on Netflix.
Image(s): Shutterstock.com