“Bandersnatch” snatches viewers on Netflix

“Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” changes how viewers interact with their movies. This new Netflix movie allows viewer interaction through a series of choices and pathways, each with a different ending.

The film, set in 1984, follows around amateur game designer Stefan Butler through his

experience creating and publishing his first game, Bandersnatch. The game itself is based off

the fictional choose-your-adventure novel by the same name. The writer of the book slowly went insane while writing it, and if the viewers choose the correct pathways, they can see Stefan following in his footsteps.

The movie in itself is very self aware. Stefan becomes aware he is not making his own

choices. Another character, Colin Ritman, starts to recognize things that have happened in

previous pathways after the viewer resets the movie. There is even a time where the viewer can tell Stefan that his life is a movie on Netflix.

This isn’t the first interactive movie Netflix has done. Netflix has made interactive movies before, but they were more aimed towards kids. None of them have been quite as complex as Bandersnatch.

To create this film the developers used code used for games such as TellTale games,

which many viewers have compared this movie to. They even timed the attention span of

viewers to see how long they would pay attention between each choice before losing interest.

However, if the viewers never pick up the remote to make any choices, the movie has its own

automatic ending. If the viewer tries to reach all the endings, the movie can last around two hours. However the total amount of footage ends up being five hours and 12 minutes.

There are so many twists and turns in this movie, it makes it very interesting to watch.

However, it is difficult to access it as many televisions can’t play the movie although all

smartphones and laptops should be able to play it. I would recommend this movie for

anyone who wants to watch a creepy movie with some friends, or if someone wants to get

creeped out alone and has a lot of time to kill.