Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Review

Samantha Brant ’19, News Editor

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a made-for-Netflix movie that premiered in December 2018, based on the popular Netflix series, Black Mirror. Bandersnatch is about a teenaged computer programmer named Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) who is designing a video game based on a choose your own adventure book called Bandersnatch. Making the movie even more interesting, it itself is choose your own adventure, which is what made me, and I’m sure many others, want to watch the movie in the first place.

The first choice you have is cute, deciding which cereal Stefan gets to eat for breakfast. But as the movie continues, the choices get darker and you can play with Stefan’s life. You can ruin his career and his life, mess with his mind, make him go crazy, even become a murderer or go to prison. It all depends on the choices you make.

When I first sat down to watch Bandersnatch, I was very excited and interested to see how the producers managed to make a choose your own adventure film. It did not entirely live up to my expectations. I’m glad I didn’t watch Bandersnatch by myself because I think I would have been bored, going through the different timelines and choosing different options. After a while, I thought it would never end. Although I did have fun messing with Stefan’s life and choosing the different options, without that, there wasn’t a lot going on with the plot to keep me interested in the movie. Because it was so closely associated with the series, Black Mirror, I had expected the story to be more deep and interesting and to make you think more. On the other hand, I think they did a very good job weaving together the different timelines and making everything flow together in a smooth way– no matter what choices you chose, it went together with the story.

Here are some quotes from other people who have watched/played the movie:

“It’s an interesting watch. It’s not really a gimmick in this movie, the choice-making actually works with the movie.”

“I think it’s interesting to see how far technology has come; I thought the concept behind Bandersnatch was really cool and creative. But I didn’t think the story itself lived up to past episodes of Black Mirror. I thought because I was going to watch it twice that I’d get to watch two radically different endings, but it was too repetitive, and I didn’t like how self-aware the plot was either.”

In conclusion, I do recommend that you watch it if you are a Black Mirror fan, but don’t get sucked into watching for more than an hour.