Delayed Reaction: Songbird

Premise: I guess COVID-24 is going to be a doozy for us all, because this makes it look like the world has fallen apart.

 

This is a bad movie. Every complaint and concern you have about it is true. It's too soon for people to be playing on our collective COVID anxiety like this. It came out too quickly. You can feel the production limitations. The story is bad. The world is too small. No one marinated on any ideas in this for enough time. I didn't like the characters. It's just a bad movie.

 

It is interestingly bad though. I'd rather watch The Room or this than any number of bad movies that I've forgotten about. At least it's fun to pick this apart. I watched it with a friend, and we repeatedly had to catch ourselves when we asked too many questions. "Why can't they just put on a hazmat suit?" "Why do none of the houses look that lived in?" "Do any of these people have jobs?" There was very little thought put into the world of this movie. This is not a believable world at any level. It's hard to find a better example of the importance of drafts. You know, actually sitting on an idea and thinking it through.

 

Because, there is an actual good movie in here. A government run amok with power. A disease that has changed how people can live and interact. How to weigh real health concerns against natural human desires. I can see all of it being the basis for a great SciFi movie or thriller one day. This movie was very cynically made though. An earnest attempt at the movie would need way more thought put into the worldbuilding. How would the world look if COVID mutated even more and ravage society for 4 years? What would've developed? How would people actually be living? Because the world of Songbird does not exist off screen, before the movie begins, or after it ends. It's a version of the world that could never exist in that short of a time.

 

One detail does almost make the entire movie worth the time spent. Late in the movie, Peter Stormare gives his villainous monologue where he reveals that he's actually a garbage man who rose up the ranks because all of his superiors got COVID and died. That's an A+ detail right there. If a COVID strain got as deadly as it is in this movie, then it does make sense that the Department of Sanitation somehow ends up with all the power, and the leader is a guy who fell into the job. And this gives me to through "garbage man supervillain" into my bag of phrases to use.

 

Other than that though, this movie is bad. Not remotely compelling, although somewhat watchable.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend