Yesterday Netflix released the trailer for its event movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and it looked pretty good if a bit kitschy (using “Relax” in your movie trailer should be illegal). Now, however, we can add gimmicky to the mix as Bandersnatch is officially a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive movie.
I was enthusiastic from the trailer that we might actually get a good video game-themed horror movie, but that excitement’s been tempered. It all sounds interesting, novel, and meta enough to warrant checking it out once, but I have my doubts that this style of storytelling will be something viewers want to come back to.
It took a while for Netflix to build this technology, and as it turns out while making an episode of Black Mirror about a video game called “Playtest” the team was interested in making it interactive, but the technology wasn’t there and they were worried it would end as a gimmick.
“Annoyingly, several weeks later, we were throwing story ideas around and this idea popped up that would only work as an interactive,” said creator Charlie Brooker. “It was good to come back and have an idea, but also daunting.”
I don’t know. Maybe this will turn out to be something really cool. Maybe it’ll be kind of lame. Either way, I’m interested in giving it a shot. You can too since Bandersnatch is on Netflix right now.
‘Black Mirror’ Interactive Film: Inside the 2-Year Journey of ‘Bandersnatch’ [THR]
