QUICK HIT: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch [2018]

Rating: TV-MA | Runtime: ~90 minutes (312 minutes, cumulative)
Release Date: December 28th, 2018 (USA)
Studio: Netflix
Director(s): David Slade
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker

You’re not in control.

In typical “me” fashion, I forgot about the “Black Mirror” choose your own adventure episode Bandersnatch. My whole concept of subscribing to Netflix—at least in its pre-COVID era—was paying for the ability to watch their original productions whenever I wanted. And, often, I used that sense of permanence to just never watch any of them.

Well, if Disney and Warner Bros. hadn’t already broken that illusion by pulling and/or shelving their own titles post-2020, Netflix is now also proving me wrong by officially shuttering its interactive arm in order to focus their platform’s resources on gaming. So, why not just make Bandersnatch available as a point-and-click game within that tab? What a perfect evolution for its meta game narrative. Who knows? Maybe they still will.

Regardless, I had fun with this and believe it deserves to be saved in some capacity. The first half is a bit rudimentary with small choices that seemingly do little besides selecting the soundtrack or triggering a cereal commercial later on, but the idea that we as the viewers don’t really have control is a purposeful one. The plot demands we do it over and do it “right.” Because we aren’t creating the story. We’re simply bouncing between its multiversal timelines.

Our goal: to earn Stefan Butler’s (Fionn Whitehead) debut video game adaptation a perfect score from its 1984 television critic (Paul Michael Bradley). The saner choices you make, the greater the opportunity of never finishing the code and either being prompted to go back and try again or simply witness a bastardized version get trashed. The more insane choices you make, the greater chance your fate will follow that of the in-movie Bandersnatch‘s author Jerome F. Davies. One of dark, murderous horrors that inevitably channel Stefan’s creative genius.

All those visual cues (like Craig Parkinson’s Dad always locking his bedroom door) get payoff somewhere in the skip logic if you’re willing to find them. Will Poulter’s Colin Ritman (Stefan’s idol) seems to know more of what’s going on than he should for a reason (both drug and physics related). And you should definitely take a spin down the “Netflix” logo option when it arrives to finally understand why they cast Alice Lowe as an otherwise straightforward psychiatrist. I only wish writer Charlie Brooker and director David Slade took more big swings like that (I say having only watched about 120 minutes of the full 312).

Well, I guess I shouldn’t tell you to do anything since you no longer can. At least not on our current “shareholders don’t care about financing art since art is just the monetized content they produce to earn enough profit for a yacht” timeline. Maybe Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos will take some LSD and jump off a balcony a la Brooker’s characters to reset our existence onto another reality where its Emmy-winning phenomenon becomes available once again.