Black Mirror – Bandersnatch review: Charlie Brooker’s interactive tale is ingeniously fiendish Bandersnatch does something far more interesting than you might expect. As usual with Black Mirror, there’s a twist

When rumours around Black Mirror: Bandersnatch first began to circulate, the notion of Black Mirror taking on an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story seemed like a marriage made in obscene, devilish heaven.

Annabel Jones and Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology, which is largely concerned with the dark possibilities of technology, is an ideal platform for which to play with this idea.

And so it proves. With Bandersnatch, now available on Netflix, we get something that’s a love-letter to ’80s adventure video games, a typically twisted and maddening tale that cleverly riffs on the nature of interactivity and freewill, and an experiment that is as much an advert for choose-your-own-adventure TV as it is a gleeful send-up of it.

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As usual with Black Mirror, what’s going on here is more than just surface level. And rather than simply give us a straightforward interactive episode with clear-cut paths as a neat, handy showcase, Brooker and co have opted for something far more interesting.

Typically, there’s a twist.

Retro fantasy, and madness

Directed by David Slade, whose intense prior creation ‘Metalhead’ gets a nod at one point (along with one or two other Black Mirror outings), Bandersnatch is set in the UK in 1984, and revolves around young programmer Stefan – who is working to adapt a famous, sprawling choose-your-own-adventure novel into a groundbreaking first-person computer game.

The backdrop naturally lends ample opportunity for stylish, nostalgic elements to come to the fore. Woolworths! ZX Spectrum games on tape! Tangerine Dream!

But this retro world is shot through with a fantastical, otherworldly tinge to its costumes, set design and cinematography that make us question its authenticity, just as Stefan himself begins to question his own reality.

Already on medication and receiving psychiatric sessions, our protagonist finds himself beset by outlandish visions and notions. And given that the author of the book in question ultimately went crazy and decapitated his wife, things start to take on a worrying dimension.

And with your remote, device or game controller in hand, it is you who is invited to guide Stefan’s journey through this madness.

Decisions, decisions…

Interactive films/TV is an area Netflix is committed to tapping into, and Bandersnatch signals its first big push into that arena.

The world of video games itself is already pursuing similar endeavours. Those who have played Telltale’s Walking Dead, David Cage’s Detroit: Become Human, Supermassive’s excellent horror saga Until Dawn or – especially – 2016 live action release Late Shift, will find much that is familiar here.

But Black Mirror: Bandersnatch may be the first major modern attempt to bring such a concept to a wide, mainstream TV-viewing audience. And with Brooker, an avowed gaming enthusiast, Netflix picked the perfect person to showcase its delights.

How it all works is relatively simple. At certain points, two choices flash up at the bottom of the screen. You have a certain amount of time to select one, and then the story continues based on that decision.

But it is the execution that enthralls, and Bandersnatch has fiendish fun with this approach on multiple levels. Seemingly small choices, like what music to buy or what to have for breakfast, can pay off in small but entertaining ways later. Options become increasingly disturbing or violent as the story goes on, confronting you with some unpleasant decisions and ramping up the horror aspect.

As for the bigger picture, viewer expectations are played upon with fourth-wall breaking self-awareness, challenging the audience, and providing avenues for eye-widening reveals, as well as opening up some deep philosophical and psychological questions.

Without giving too much away, Bandersnatch is as concerned with confronting the viewer as it is with the story’s events. In both wry and cutting fashion.

A terrific cast

Given that a total of five hours of footage is reportedly available here – albeit it largely in the shape of alternative versions of the same scenes – the amount of work for all involved must have been considerable (you wonder if Stefan’s sprawling bedroom wall-chart is a knowing testament to that). But those behind Bandersnatch have gamely embraced the whole endeavour.

As usual, Black Mirror has assembled an excellent cast to bring it all together.

Fionn Whitehead, who you’ll most likely recognise from Christopher Nolan’s war epic Dunkirk, stars as the troubled, anxious Stefan – who is seemingly suffering from paranoid schizophrenia (or is he?).

Alice Lowe strikes a compelling, ambiguous note as Stefan’s therapist, Line of Duty’s Craig Parkinson is concerned and frustrated as Stefan’s Dad, Will Poulter is both eccentric and ominous as a renowned game creator, and Asim Chaudhry has fun as an ambitious bottom-line businessman who dreams of creating “Motown for computer games”. Brooker’s jab at the industry’s modern day publishers, perhaps.

The story perhaps understandably lacks a degree of focus, but that potential issue is smartly incorporated into the tale itself.

Stefan struggles to tell what is real, and what is not. He experiences shocking things that may or may not have happened.

Given this, what might begin as frustration with the ‘re-playing’ of scenes or prompts to try another path, actually begin to feel like a key aspect of the saga. And that’s probably the point.

Brooker’s final masterstroke

The occasional narrative ‘dead ends’, ‘fail states’ or ‘game overs’, inviting you to go back and try another option, offer a host of subtextual possibilities.

Are these Edge of Tomorrow style resets a meta-commentary on the illusion of control? A love-letter to the old finger-in-the-page trick of classic choose-your-own-adventure books? Or even a sly dig at the way so many modern video games offer ‘choices’ that are eventually revealed to be largely make-believe?

The answer, of course, is likely to be all of the above. And Bandersnatch is all the more fascinating for it.

But perhaps the most satisfying thing to result from the interactive nature of Bandersnatch is the way in which Brooker and his creative team don’t have to settle for just one ending, or tone. They can give us them all.

Via conclusions that vary from the hilarious to the haunting, there’s room for tragic, harrowing themes of mental illness, guilt and loss to be explored, but we also get fourth-wall breaking absurdity that is outrageous, satirical and laugh-out-loud funny (Lowe and Parkinson must have had the time of their lives filming one surprising segment).

Through its cocktail of delirious outcomes, Bandersnatch blends darkness and light, humour and shock-value, and ultimately gives the Black Mirror audience far more than it bargained for.

Brooker and Netflix have somehow managed to sell the viewer on the potential for interactive TV and movies here, while simultaneously commenting on and subverting the entire concept itself.

If that isn’t somehow ingenious, I don’t know what is.

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