I’m not sure why I wasn’t impressed with this, other than because I did Netflix’s Interactive Kimmy Schmidt episode long before trying this one. Had I tried this first I might have been impressed with the overall ambition of this project. This is Netflix’s first “choose your own adventure style” film after all.
The year is 1984 and young computer programmer Stefan has snagged his dream gig, developing a video game based on the novel “Bandersnatch” by an author who went insane and murdered his wife. OK, so the developing the video game is the good part of that gig and the other part, obviously not so much.
With your controller in hand, you guide Stefan through a series of choices, ultimately sending him down a rabbit hole of conspiracy fact and fiction, questioning whether concepts like time and reality even exist as the young lad gets driven further and further into madness.
The story relies on some meta snark in that like a choose your own adventure novel, one where you can just flip back to the beginning if you screw up, it too can flip you back, sometimes to the last choice, sometimes to the start and the underlying answer as to how Stefan can wake up and get a do over is that time is not as real a concept as we think it is.
If you’re looking for overall answers to the plot’s questions, you’ll be disappointed, unless you want to do it all over and over again and maybe there’s a good ending. I never found one. I know Black Mirror is dark so an unhappy ending is to be expected but I thought I’d get an ending that at least tries to explain how all this nonsense is possible. You get various answers at various times and none seem to jive with each other.
So…it’s ok. Maybe something to do when you aren’t busy and if it went over my head, then so be it. I came, I saw, I tried and I felt it was a lot of build up that just doesn’t go anywhere no matter how hard you try unless there’s a special combo of moves I missed.
SIDENOTE: The option where you can choose to explain to Stefan that you are a person from the future controlling his moves through Netflix is funny, particularly when you choose the option to try to explain to a 1980’s person what Netflix is.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy (moderately.)
Bookshelf Battle 