Netflix released Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on 28 December 2018, announcing it only the day before. The film runs 90 minutes, unless you count the paths you never take. Charlie Brooker wrote it. David Slade directed it. And it asks you, the person holding the remote, to decide what a young programmer named Stefan Butler does next.
That is the hook, and it is a good one. Whether it is a good film is a separate question, and the answer sits at 6.1 of 10.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Stefan Butler Pitches Tuckersoft
The setup is Britain in July 1984. Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) is adapting a “choose your own adventure” book into a video game. The book is called Bandersnatch, and it belonged to his late mother. The author is Jerome F. Davies. Stefan pitches the game to Tuckersoft, the company run by Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry), which employs the famous creator Colin Ritman (Will Poulter).
Then the film hands you a choice. Stefan can accept Tuckersoft’s help or turn it down. Accept, and Colin tells him he chose the “wrong path.” The game ships months later and gets panned as “designed by committee.” Stefan wants to try again, the film rewinds to the day of the offer, and you get the same choice back.
Reject the offer and Stefan builds the game alone in his bedroom, on a September deadline. This is the version most viewers will spend the most time inside, and it is the one where the film’s machinery starts to show.
A Stuffed Rabbit and a Derailed Train
Stefan’s life splits between the game and the people around him. He turns stressed and hostile toward his father, Peter (Craig Parkinson). He sees Dr. R. Haynes (Alice Lowe) for therapy. You can have him tell her how his mother died: at five years old, Peter took away his stuffed rabbit. His mother was delayed because Stefan would not leave without it. The train she took derailed. She was killed. Stefan blames himself.
Dr. Haynes prescribes medicine. You can have Stefan take it or flush it. You can send him to Colin’s flat, where Colin lives with his girlfriend Kitty (Tallulah Haddon) and infant daughter Pearl (Laura Evelyn). You can have Stefan take LSD with Colin, or refuse — and if he refuses, Colin spikes his tea anyway. Colin rants about secret government mind-control programs and alternate timelines.
The film is named after a real video game that Imagine Software planned to release in 1984. That game took its name from the bandersnatch, a creature Lewis Carroll invented.
Branch Manager and 35 Days of Filming
The production story is stranger than most of the branches. Netflix approached Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones about an interactive film in May 2017. Netflix already had several interactive projects running for children. Writing a script this non-linear was hard enough that Netflix built a program called Branch Manager to handle it. The content also forced changes to how the platform uses cache memory.
Bandersnatch was meant to be part of Black Mirror’s fifth series. The production ran long, so it became a standalone film instead, and the fifth series was pushed back.
Slade had directed the series four episode “Metalhead.” Whitehead was only told the film was interactive after he was offered the part. Production took eight months, with Netflix needing assets locked by the end of November 2018. The actors had two weeks to prepare. Filming lasted about 35 days, well past the average for a Black Mirror piece. Exterior work happened at St George’s Walk, a shopping centre in Croydon, London, in April 2018.
A flowchart was used on set at first. The actors found it made things more complicated, not less.
Colin Ritman Is the Hardest Part
Whitehead and Poulter both compared the work to theatre. Slade called Colin the hardest character to understand. One scene had to be shot three times, with Colin holding different levels of knowledge each time. Slade told Poulter not to play how Colin knew things, only that he did.
Whitehead has said he struggled to hold Stefan’s constant anxiety and tension. That reads on screen. Whitehead plays Stefan as a knot that tightens rather than a person who changes, which fits the material and also limits it.
Davies appears in the film, played by independent game developer Jeff Minter. Jones suggested him. Minter had appeared in a documentary Jones and Brooker made. Parts of Colin’s background came from Minter’s own life. Writer Warren Ellis was asked to play Davies but could not commit to the shooting schedule and travel.
Poulter and Chaudhry later reprised their roles in the series 7 episode “Plaything.”
What the Choice Actually Costs
Here is the problem with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. The interactive mechanic is the whole pitch, and it is also the thing that flattens the story. You are not making decisions. You are finding the doors the film already built. Once you notice that, the free-will theme stops being a theme and becomes a description of the delivery system.
The best material sits outside the branching. Stefan’s guilt about the rabbit is a real, specific wound — a five-year-old’s stubbornness turned into a death he carries. Dr. Haynes is a steady presence in a film that otherwise keeps moving. Peter is a father who took a toy away and got a dead wife, and the film never lets that land as hard as it should.
The LSD thread with Colin is where the film has the most fun and the least discipline. Colin’s rants about mind control and alternate timelines are the film telling you what it is about. That is a mistake. The branches already say it.
Why 6.1 Is the Right Number
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch scores 6.1 of 10. That matches the published critical number: Metacritic sits at 61 of 100.
A 6.1 is the right landing spot for a film that is more interesting to describe than to sit through. The craft is real. Slade and his cast shot about 35 days of material that had to interlock, and they pulled it off. Branch Manager is a genuine technical answer to a genuine writing problem.
But the mechanic ages badly on a second pass. The first run is a magic trick. The second run is a flowchart. And a story about a man who cannot tell whether he is choosing his own life does not get stronger when you can see the seams.
Worth watching once, and worth talking about longer than that. Worth rewatching, not really.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch — 6.1 of 10
The Numbers
- Release date: 28 December 2018, on Netflix; announced the day before
- Runtime: 90 minutes
- Director: David Slade
- Writer: Charlie Brooker
- Cast: Fionn Whitehead (Stefan Butler), Will Poulter (Colin Ritman), Asim Chaudhry (Mohan Thakur), Craig Parkinson (Peter Butler), Alice Lowe (Dr. Haynes)
- Setting: Britain, July 1984
- Score: 6.1 of 10 (Metacritic 61 of 100)
- Production: Eight months; about 35 days of filming; assets locked by end of November 2018
- Exterior filming: St George’s Walk, Croydon, London, April 2018
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