Songbird Review

 

Songbird is a science fiction thriller inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. The movie is produced by Platinum Dunes, Invisible Narratives, and Catchlight Studios and distributed by STXfilms. Songbird is written by Adam Mason and Simon Boyes and directed by Adam Mason.

The story is it's the year 2024 and the Coronavirus has mutated. Anyone who is infected are taken from their homes against their will and moved to "Q-Zones". Then Nico hears the news that his girlfriend Sara is believed to be infected and she's going to be moved to the Q-Zones, now Nico must race across the streets of an empty Los Angeles and save the one he loves.

Initial Reaction

Now I'm going to do what I've always done, and that's be honest. I was looking forward to this. Sure my interest did have to take and break for a moment because I had to roll my eyes because of everybody say "this is too soon", "how offensive", and "I can't believe the filmmakers would make something like this in times like these". The reason for my eye rolls from these comments was simple.  1) Despite them making these comments you know for sure they'll must likely be the first ones to watch this. And 2) They're all offended and outraged by this....yet I didn't hear I single word when Freeform released their romantic comedy miniseries titled Love in the Time of Corona. Seriously, where was the controversy for THAT?!

Cons

The biggest issue with the movie is a common complaint and that is we don't get to know more about this world. We only get a small bit of info. For instance, we know next to nothing about the Q-Zones. We know how someone gets into them but we never witness what goes on in them. And what also made the execution so poor was something that caught my eye. During the movie we see graffiti that says "FIGHT BACK!". Is there some sort of rebellion? I don't know because the writers didn't explain. I know not EVERYTHING needs explained but a good chunk of info would've been nice. My other issue with the film is it's villain, Emmett. They gave us a backstory on him but we don't know he's motivation. Like did he get drunk on power or did doing so much at once drive him crazy? Well we don't know because the writers didn't really tell us.

Middle Ground

One decent aspect of Songbird is the romance story. It was decent. Nothing too much to complain about. The other okay thing was the filmmaking. It was fine in some areas others not so much.  Like there's an actual scene that has shaky cam.

Pros

Really the only redeeming quality of the movie is the actors. They really do a good job despite the weak story.

Songbird is quite a disappointing movie. The idea is good but the execution wasn't. We know so very little about the film's world and our bad guy doesn't have a motivation. The romance and filmmaking was fine, nothing I thought you should get bent out of shape about. The only true good thing is the acting.

My final rating is Bad But Harmless

So yeah, I'm really bummed out this wasn't as good as I was hoping. Anyhow that's going to do it for me. Come back on Monday, Dec 14th for my review of Wolfwalkers. Until then enjoy the rest of your day.