In 2018 cinema history was made. Black Mirror, a television franchise from Netflix, produced the world’s first interactive film. The film is no doubt the beginning of something huge, as the various pathways and alternate endings based on the different choices you can make, is something entirely unique to this movie. The movie itself, can only be watched on an interactive console (i.e a phone, a gaming console such as Xbox or Playstation, etc.) and cannot be watched on a regular television set.
The film’s plot surrounds a young game designer and his attempt to leave his mark on the world in 1984. The main character, Stefan Butler, is an 18 year old game designer who is looking to create a 64 bit game based on the novel ‘Bandersnatch’ by Jerome F Davies. His inspiration for this was that it was his mother’s favourite book, and she passed away when he was five years old. Stefan goes to a corporation called Tuckersoft, where the USA’s best game designer, Colin Ritman, takes Stefan under his wing in order to help him conceptualize and create his masterpiece game. Colin opens Stefan’s eyes to the idea of alternative realities and parallel universes, and Stefan slowly descends into madness. While creating his game, Stefan also studies Jerome F Davies, the novel’s author. He begins to understand his history and the reason for his mental breakdown, where Davies eventually lost it and decapitated his wife.
Throughout the movie, the various choices you are given are ultimately dependent in determining the ending. I don’t want to spoil too much and reveal any choices, but let’s just say that Stefan will find that he and Jerome F Davies have much more in common than he realizes…
In conclusion, the interactive film produced by Black Mirror, Bandersnatch, has taken the world by storm. The story, the fact that you can make decisions that influence the outcome of the movie, the continuity and flow of the film without feeling choppy or confusing, all make this movie one to watch. While the film itself - by choosing one certain pathway without going back and changing decisions - has an approximately 1h30m run time, if you went back and re-did every single pathway, and explored every option, it would take around 6 hours.
As much as I did enjoy the film, the two pathways I went through ended in a pretty anticlimactic way. I can’t say too much without revealing how the story goes, but I hope that other pathways have more interesting endings.
Overall, the move is a fantastic one, and certainly opens the door for future potentially interactive (or something as equally creative) films. It has revolutionized the way people watch films, and has ushered in a new era movie experiences.
Written by Jack Fowler
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