Screen Review 10. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Show: Black Mirror
Episode: Bandersnatch
Director: David Slade
Runtime: 1h 30m
Release Date: December 28th, 2018
Stars: Fionn Whitehead, Craig Parkinson, Alice Lowe
Rated: TV-MA

Synopsis: In 1984, a young programmer begins to question reality as he works to adapt a fantasy novel into a video game.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"You are just a puppet. You are not in control."

Bandersnatch is the story of a young man trying to develop a video game in the 1980s. It is also (and this is where it starts getting good) a choose-your-own-adventure television episode that lets the viewer pick which choices the protagonist will make, leading to a wide variety of events and conclusions. As you pick and reach endings, you're allowed to circle back and change your choices to see other outcomes and try again.

As the newest episode of Black Mirror, I was originally a bit skeptical. I am not usually a fan of Black Mirror's antics. Like The Twilight Zone, the show is a series of stand-alone episodes with horror and sci-fi themes and a big twist every episode, but I'm not a fan of horror and I generally disagree with the show's "technology is evil" thesis. Plus, I find the show to, at times, be unnecessarily grim. It's a personal preference.

Bandersnatch, however, was amazing! It is very similar to a visual novel, but outshines any comparisons through its sheer cinematic quality. I can't decide whether it felt more like a movie or like a game. It managed to be both and neither.

I watched/played Bandersnatch with a group of friends, voting on which outcomes to pick. We all loved it, and got totally immersed in the story, shouting out theories and arguing over choices. By the end, I was so invested that I kept repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" to the main character for the terrible choices we were making, as though he was real and I was actually hurting somebody. I really did want to see him finish that video game (a desire some of my more masochist friends did not share).

The official length of Bandersnatch is a quick one and a half hours. My friends and I played for over three, and didn't even get every possible scene and ending. We cut it off early. If you sit down to watch this, don't expect to be done in less than two hours. It's gonna take you the whole night.

The episode gives you a choice every few minutes. There are a few instances where the choices lack weight in significant moments (if the choice is given to you at all), but that's hardly a complaint, since the plethora of dividing routes makes up for it.

There were a few moments when the choices and their outcomes actually surprised me and my friends with genuinely good twists. There are a few points where, when going down a route you've gone down before, a new option previously not there will appear, which really encourages you to explore all possible routes. It's not a chore, it's a treasure hunt.

And as for the story itself, I just loved it. I loved the characters. I loved the cinematography. I loved the 80s aesthetic. I (as a Computer Science minor) loved the relatability of the main character wanting to destroy his computer because the goddamn code wouldn't run.

And I loved the themes! I loved how the story touched on parallel universes and free will (not as well as some other media I've consumed, but well enough to engage me and leave me second-guessing). It at times reminded me Undertale's meta themes of control and player responsibility.

My one complaint while watching the episode was that, depending on which routes you went down, backstories would change. This made it so that, instead of there being one story to uncover and dig into, there were multiple stories that you could pick from. For instance, the contents of a discovery might change based on past choices. In hindsight, this makes the episode more interesting, letting the writers explore more ideas, and does play more into the idea that the main character might actually just be going insane, but was still (for someone like me who loves lore) not quite what I wanted.

Still, the episode was amazing, although I'm not sure that I would want to regularly watch episodes formatted like this, It was really its themes and story that made it work far more than its "choose-your-own-adventure" gimmick. Still, I enjoyed it immensely and may find myself returning to it someday, just to find those last few endings. I would recommend it, especially if you're a fan of video games.

- Claire