Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Adam Mason
Starring: KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare,
Alexandra Daddario, Paul Walter Hauser, Demi Moore
When the world went into lockdown back in March 2020, the question on movie
lovers' lips was "Will anyone shoot a film during lockdown?" Now we find
ourselves asking "Did anyone not shoot a film during lockdown?" It seems
like every opportunist with a camera quickly knocked out a movie while the
streets were empty, with the results ranging from the exploitative
Corona Zombies to the acclaimed 'Zoom-horror'
Host. Songbird is a little different however. Released under
Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes banner, writer/director
Adam Mason's thriller boasts Hollywood production values and a cast
featuring recognisable names like Demi Moore,
Bradley Whitford and Alexandra Daddario.
Set in Los Angeles 2024, Songbird imagines a world four years
into living with COVID-23. It seems that unlike COVID-19, no vaccine has
been developed for this deadlier strain, and so the City of Angels, and
presumably the rest of the world, remains in a state of lockdown. Citizens
are forced to stay in their homes, and any who develop symptoms of the virus
are taken away to the quarantine "Q-Zone", where they are essentially left
to die.
A tiny section of the population is immune to the virus however, and such
folk are forced to work in essential jobs. Our hero, Nico (KJ Apa),
is one such specimen, a bicycle courier. He spends his days riding around
the city dropping parcels off to rich people in the Hollywood hills, and his
nights sleeping outside the apartment of his girlfriend Sara (Sofia Carson), whom he can only communicate with by video calls or through her door.
When Sara is threatened with being sent to the Q-Zone, Nico attempts to
procure a black market "immunity passport" that will allow the couple to
flee the city.
Songbird integrates its pandemic thriller into a
well-established sub-genre. It's the latest ensemble film to portray Los
Angeles as the world's loneliest city, following on from the likes of
Welcome to LA, Short Cuts, Magnolia, Playing by Heart, Crash
et al. Along with the central storyline of Nico and Sara, we get subplots
featuring Daddario and Paul Walter Hauser as a singer and paraplegic
military veteran who bond over video calls; Moore and Whitford as a wealthy
couple who sell fake immunity bracelets; and an over-the-top
Peter Stormare as a demented sanitation officer. None of these
strands are particularly interesting, and have little to say beyond how
boring it is to be stuck indoors all day.
Mason's film also calls back to a surprising source - Kevin Costner's
notorious 1997 flop The Postman. That movie was similarly set in a post-apocalyptic America, and featured
a hero making essential deliveries to a depressed populace. It's best
remembered for its unintentionally hilarious po-faced approach to a very
silly concept, but Songbird gives it a run for its money when
Nico intones in moody voiceover how he "wasn't delivering packages. I was
delivering hope," as though we've been watching a feature length Amazon
promo.
The biggest problem with Songbird is how it refuses to get
off the fence and adopt a political stance. An already divided US has become
even more bisected by COVID-19, with conservatives claiming it a hoax and
liberals refusing to leave their homes, and Songbird feels
wary of offending either side. It's never clear how the society it presents
continues to function. Why are the immune happy to work while everyone else
gets to sit at home? How are those who stay at home making a living - has
the US finally accepted socialism and implemented a Universal Basic Income?
Songbird hopes that we get wrapped up in its unconvincing
romantic plot and don't bother thinking about such things. But seeing how
the pandemic accelerated the gap between the haves and have-nots, it's
impossible to erase such queries from our mind.
If we hadn't lived through a less extreme version of Songbird, would it be more successful as a work of sci-fi? Possibly, though it's
all so poorly conceived that there really isn't enough to sink our teeth
into. Its cynical view of a world that has seemingly just given up the fight
against the virus makes it almost impossible to embrace, and I couldn't wrap
my head around why we would want Nico to physically unite with Sara, when
everything the film had told us to that point suggested doing so would spell
certain death for the young woman, given how riddled with the virus Nico's
job had made him.
Perhaps in a decade or so, Songbird will have some value as a
shoddy document of what we all went through in 2020, something for kids who
are currently too young to fully grasp what's occurring can look at and
appreciate why Mommy and Daddy were so stressed out back then.
