Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

I wanted to quit watching so many times but stuck it out hoping the ending would be be worth it. It was so boring and the story was pointless. Wasted time I won't get back.

Fmovies: Despite the hype I see in the comments ("Mind Blown!", etc, etc) and the clever attempt by Brooker to make a multi-pathed story, the end result barely hangs together as a credible plot.

While it is fun to "control" the main character, the novelty soon wears thin and you come to realise you, the viewer/controller, just have the illusion of choice over what the character does when in actual fact you don't.

I suppose that is the point of the film, but it is hardly earth-shattering nor ground-breaking.

I'm giving this 5 stars for at least making a good attempt at a multi-path interactive film. However, as many who are raving about it now will see in time, it really falls far short of a good film. Novelty value can never replace a good story and a good story is something you will not find here.

It never occurred to me that something like this would someday be tried. Kudos to Netflix for trying to push the boundaries of what is possible through this medium. That said, the whole thing felt like a game. A fascinating game because of the novelty, but I felt none of what usually a good film would elicit. Yes, there was a lot of anticipation of what would happen next, but overall, due to the frequent pauses to choose, there was no continuity or involvement in the story per se. Some of the choices too felt pretty childish. The idea that the character was actually feeling like he had no free will and felt compelled to do things as though someone (the viewer) was controlling him - well, it brings a smile the first time, but later, feels like something that perhaps a smoked-up teen would find mind boggling. Overall, yes, definitely something that people would be thrilled to watch and try, but I sincerely hope we do not have a lot of this type of interactive films - at least not at the expense of "normal" films.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch fmovies. Bandersnatch is not a new experience by any means, although it is new for Netflix. There have been games like this for many years. However, for this particular title the choices are rather uninteresting and there isn't really a "choice" when you are choosing between very close actions. Basically whatever you chose gets you to similar points so not really a choice based ending. I don't think the choices were very wise chosen and overall the plot of the movie was not very great. I mean it's interesting but nothing new or groundbreaking compared to other episodes from Black Mirror, that is, mind you, a darn good TV show. I think an interactive movie based on Juniper City or Metalheads episodes would've turned much much better. There is also some sort of disparity between what you chose, what the character does in the movie and what happens in the scene. Meaning that somehow you choose what the other characters are doing with your choices instead of the main character, and that's also a bit confusing and a bit of a drag for me. So overall I recommend this title for it's novelty, but not so much for the script and general idea. Worth your time though, just for the sake of it.

This is groundbreaking. Can't really get a grasp on it. Who ever wrote this mapping is a genius. This is the future and Netflix owns it. Need to watch it again and choose sugar puffs instead of frosties. This is like a video game but a movie and makes u wonder so many things on the user pathway.

Mind blow! Netflix treading into new waters. I wonder what I missed by making the wrong decisions or right ones. There must be so many different endings....or not. I won't tell you mine. Fun ride! Want more of these. Maybe for a horror film?

I consider "Black Mirror" to be the best anthology series since Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone". That's how highly I regard the show. Unfortunately, when it comes to the choose-your-own-adventure interactive "Bandersnatch", I left the experience wishing a "normal" episode or film had been released instead of this experiment.

For a basic plot summary, "Bandersnatch" tells the story of Stefan (Fionn Whitehead), a computer programmer in the 1980s who is working on a path-choosing game at the same company as his idol (and fellow master programmer) Colin (Will Poulter). While creating the game, Stefan becomes convinced that someone else is controlling his actions, much like the characters he himself is creating.

With such a unique concept as "Bandersnatch"--letting the viewer choose certain decisions for the characters--both the plot and convention must be evaluated. In this case, however, it is difficult to untangle one from the other, as the filmmakers intentionally break the fourth wall on numerous occasions. In other words, it is impossible to separate "the plot" from "the choices".

Though there were a few things that "Bandersnatch" did which intrigued me (mostly located in the first 20-30 minutes of the experience, the poor star rating ultimately came down to this for me: with every "wrong" ending I took--thus having to go back and try again--I felt a bit more removed from the overall story and thus my stake in the characters. To be honest, it is almost the exact same emotion I experienced while reading choose-your-own-adventure books as a child. They were fun for awhile, but after a time I became fatigued by the back-and-forth and wanted to get back to more traditional storytelling techniques.

This is to say nothing that with every back-track, I felt like I was continually being taken out of the plot and having to remember what was happening. This worked for about the first half hour or so, but after that it got really messy for my viewing experience.

So, while I have to give "Black Mirror" at least some credit for putting a new idea out there for people to experiment with, at the end of the day I wished I would have had more of their standard episodes instead. To be completely honest, I don't think that this type of choice-based content watching will ever be more than a fad or gimmick, although of course that remains to be seen.

For this viewer, however, I prefer to be able to relax and enjoy one story carefully crafted by a team of filmmakers. Adding in audience participation just makes things really, really messy when all is said and done.