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[Review] Black Mirror’s ‘Bandersnatch’ Could Use Some Tweaking

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If any show on Netflix was going to tackle a choose your own adventure type of viewing experience, the logical choice would be Black Mirror. And when this turned out to be the case, the logical expectation would be for the episode to be absolutely amazing.

But Bandersnatch is really only interesting on a surface level and doesn’t get much deeper than a novelty – not quite the standard for Charlie Brooker’s mind-bending science fiction series.

The story follows a young man named Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead) as he attempts to create a videogame based on a choose your own adventure novel titled Bandersnatch. The viewer is able to make choices for Stefan as he works towards creating his game in 1984. The first acts a tutorial – you choose which cereal he will eat, and later on you’ll see a commercial on Stefan’s TV for the chosen cereal. It’s kind of neat and will serve as a hint of what you will be able to do.

It starts out pretty interesting, and retains that interest for the most part. If you fail early on at making the right choices for Stefan (there are a couple of choices that will break the narrative completely and force you to “go back” and correct it), Stefan will comment that he’s been there before. He’ll simply “know” certain things and predict what others will say, setting the episode up for some very meta situations.

At one point, you can even inform Stefan that you are from Netflix, influencing what he does in every situation. It is at the same time both funny and bizarre to watch his reaction as he tries to understand the concept of a streaming service as the episode takes place in 1984. From there, you can really branch out and make some crazy decisions – but the episode will end with a wacky predicament and have you go back to do another one, leaving you feel like there are actual “right” and “wrong” outcomes for Stefan.

The conclusions to this episode are really where Bandersnatch falls apart, simply for that fact that many of the endings don’t really feel like an ending. Many of the endings just left us with the option to “go back”, leaving us to wonder whether or not Stefan was to be stuck in a loop or the viewer just isn’t able to finish the episode.

But when the credits finally did roll and all of the endings had been exhausted, the whole experience just feels somewhat fatiguing. None of the endings gave the feeling of definitive dread or absolute conclusion – and though part of me thinks that it may just due to the fact that you can essentially cycle through all the endings by going back, a bigger part of me is decided on the endings simply not being satisfying enough.

In fact, the cohesive story as a whole seems to be a tad one-dimensional despite the choices and meta experience of Bandersnatch. It’s not awful; it’s just that if you take out the element of choice from this Netflix event, none of the story lines are strong enough or fleshed out enough to stand on its own.

On this one, I would choose “Go back.” I don’t doubt Black Mirror is more than capable of pulling this off in a better way; they just need to make some better choices next time.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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