I also have Netflix back for the first time in a while (years, actually), so I'll be playing catch-up there, particularly in regards to their shows and original content, with the occasional new review of something I watched there as well, starting with this review!
When I was a kid, I just loved "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Remember those? For those unfamiliar, they were "interactive" books in which, you, the reader, helped control the narrative by, every so often, choosing from a selection of given choices to propel the story forward. Choose wisely, and you could earn yourself a happy ending. Choose poorly, and you could end up dead.
Basically, it was sort of the whole "Lady, or the Tiger?" story where you did the choosing, only this time, stuff actually happened as a result of that choice, rather than leaving things up to one's imagination. Of course, the "free will" offered up in such stories was a bit of an illusion, as there were only so many choices one could make (or that one was given, for that matter), and all of them were predetermined by the author, with only one given outcome for each choice possible.
In the latest episode of Black Mirror, entitled Bandersnatch, series creator Charlie Booker undergoes his most ambitious narrative yet, tackling precisely such an interactive story, only this time, done as a movie, in which the viewer (or viewers, as the case may be) encounters a series of choices along the way that determine which route the story will take. For instance, at one point, you choose between two types of cereal to eat. At another, you choose between two Tangerine Dream albums at the record store. And so on.
These seemingly innocuous choices can lead to happiness for the main character, but just like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, more often they lead to death or some other such twisted fate. This is Black Mirror, after all, so truly happy endings are in short supply, anyway- San Juniper is the only one that comes to mind, though more than a few have an ending that delivers a twisted justice to those who have been wronged, which is a sort of happy ending in Black Mirror-land, I guess (i.e. Black Museum).
On an amusing side note, the company behind the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books sued Netflix for "tarnishing their brand," lol. To be fair, not only were those books the first thing I thought of when I heard about the premise, but I seem to recall a character even mentioning it within the film itself, so they may have a point there.
According to an article I read, the company in question, Chooseco, LLC, has been actively pursuing a similar type of movie/series for years now, and Netflix not only knew about it, but even went so far as to try and license the rights for themselves, unsuccessfully, so Chooseco may have them dead to rights, there, especially after sending them a "cease and desist" letter after finding out Netflix were moving forward on their project anyway. I also remember a similar type of thing with a videotape-driven Clue game when I was a kid- not sure if they got sued as well.
Anyway, whatever the case, it really is a neat idea, and if the execution has its flaws, kudos for trying to do something different. Here, the issue is that, in order to get to "new" choices, or redo older ones, the viewer pretty much has to repeat certain sequences all over again, which can become annoying AF, especially once you've seen certain scenes more than a few times. On the plus side, Netflix does remember your choices and offer you the chance to go back and try another, but it does reset if you start the entire film again, so there's that.
While this sort of thing can be fun in a movie like Groundhog Day or the Happy Death Day series, there the choice is out of your hands, so you don't really have to do anything, and there are enough differences to make it a "new" experience each time its repeated, which helps the recurring sequences to be more tolerable. Here, you just have to re-watch the same exact thing over and over again to get to the alternative footage, which can be a chore.
To that end, if even the thought of re-watching the same stuff over and over again sounds annoying to you, then I highly recommend the "feature" version, in which a healthy dose of the choices are selected from and presented as a non-"playable" movie, as in the choices are made for you, and you can just sit back and watch many of the potential endings and various events that occur from making a specific choice without actually doing anything.
You will still have to re-watch certain scenes, but you get a lot of the best scenes and endings without having to lift a finger, so there's that. Also, the film version kind of blares through the repeated stuff for you as well, while still amusingly repeating certain elements, almost in a "stuck in a loop" fashion, a la a "gif," to hammer home where the divergence occurs and the choice would be made if you were watching the "playable" version.
As for the story, it revolves around a teen that, inspired by, you guessed it, a "Choose You Own Adventure"-style book by the name of Bandersnatch- hence the title- decides to put together a computer game based on it. "Bandersnatch" is an allusion to a fictional creature created by author Lewis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame, which also informed another "choice"-based adventure, The Matrix- remember the whole "red pill or blue pill" thing?
The Bandersnatch crops up in a number of Carroll's works, notably the Alice sequel, Through the Looking Glass, which figures into the premise here. In one of the pathways you can go down, the main teen literally does just that- goes through a mirror into an alternate reality, albeit his own, but in the past, ostensibly to "change" things that didn't turn out too well the first time around, not unlike the classic cult film Donnie Darko. I'll leave it to you to find out if he succeeds.
Like that film, this one is set in the past, in this case, 1984, a few years before Darko. At this time, computer games were still in their relative infancy, so programmers were still working out the bugs, to say nothing of the wonky graphics. As you might guess, this leads to a lot of retro goodness, so if you're a fan of 8-bit games, you're in for a treat.
Ditto if you love 80's-era music. The soundtrack features- along with the aforementioned Tangerine Dream, who figure prominently into the narrative- stuff like The Thompson Twins, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Depeche Mode, Kajagoogoo, Eurythmics and XTC.
The fun begins in earnest when, after landing a deal to make his video-game a reality, the teen in question, Stefan (Fionn Whitehead, of Dunkirk) begins to go down the rabbit hole of his own mind, and loses touch with reality as he gets deeper into the world of the game which he created and the problems that arise in his trying to perfect it.
As you might guess, this leads to concern from his father (Craig Parkinson, Misfits), who worriedly forces Stefan to regularly visit a psychiatrist, Dr. R. Haynes (Alice Lowe, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which is probably what helped her land this role, as there are certain similarities between this and that show).
In addition, there's pressure from his employer, Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry, People Just Do Nothing), and encouragement that may or may not be self-serving from fellow game programmer, Colin Ritman (Will Poulter, The Maze Runner series), who has some interesting ideas for how Stefan can loosen up and crack the code of the game- to say nothing of life. Colin is sort of the "Morpheus" of the film, one could say.
I won't spoil anything from there, except to say that, in patented Black Mirror style, things get mighty dark along the way, and, depending on what paths in the road you choose, so to speak, they can be deadly... or even amusingly meta. Wait until you come across the Netflix "option"- you'll see. Another meta-pathway kind of reminded me of a similar gambit in the recent Romanoffs mini-series.
I'm not sure there's truly a happy ending here, no matter what route you take, but some of the endings are more clever than others, that's for sure. I also dug the one that brings things to present day, involving another game programmer working on a similar type game, leaving open the possibility of a follow-up in the future. Others involve murder, suicide, and/or prison time for our main character, and there are a few dead ends that really lead nowhere. There's maybe 10-12 endings in all.
I suppose how much you enjoy this depends on your own attachment, or lack thereof, to the whole "Choose Your Own Adventure" thing, or perhaps to old-school video-games. That, and your level of patience when it comes to the approach. Like I said, if you get bored, there's always the "feature" option, which takes the whole choice-making thing out of your hands for you.
Also of note to Black Mirror fans is the presence, as ever, of Easter Eggs within the film alluding to previous episodes. Some are obvious- the recurring symbol from White Bear, for instance, and the "Saint Juniper" clinic, where Stefan visits his psychiatrist, a clear nod to San Junipero- while others are more hidden. Keep an eye out for newspaper headlines, for instance, and the titles of some of the video-games shown, as well as TV news reports. Apparently, there are references to upcoming episodes as well, though I can't speak to that, for obvious reasons.
I myself really enjoyed the experience on the whole, and, as a recent returnee to Netflix, it was a nice sort of "welcome back," as it were, showing that the streaming service remains a cut above the rest. It does suck that the price is going up soon, though. Hopefully, I'll be able to hold on to it for at least a few months this time before taking another break. I'm tempted to try out the upcoming Disney one whenever it comes out, though, so we'll see- I might have to make some choices of my own soon IRL as well, as it turns out. 😨
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