“He and I came out of this very guerrilla filmmaking world back in England. “My writing partner Simon Boyes called me up, sounding unexpectedly excited,” Mason says. Having directed a string of low-budget horror films and thrillers with titles like “The Devil’s Chair,” “Blood River” and “They Come Knocking,” the 45-year-old Mason was now coming face-to-face with true fear. He was worried about his wife and three young children, with whom he shares a two-bedroom duplex in L.A., and about his aging parents living 5,000 miles away in his native England. With the worsening coronavirus crisis triggering lockdowns and blaring headlines around the country, a passion project Mason was set to direct for Blumhouse Pictures had shut down just five days into pre-production. Either way, it’s headed to the history books.On March 14, filmmaker Adam Mason, like virtually everyone else in Hollywood and across the planet Earth, was freaking out. For many, the topical gimmick will prove irresistible but for others, it will be repellent, making the decision to avoid an expensive, anti-escapist rental all too easy. Songbird is an acceptably watchable thriller that’s more notable for what it achieves technically than anything else. Apa and Carson’s love story is a rather milquetoast hinge for the plot that doesn’t really carry us through emotionally, although there is an added weight to the power of their big kiss at the end (both for the characters and for them as actors). Rather like The Purge, it sets up an intriguing world of possibilities but keeps the focus frustratingly tight – an unavoidable decision in this instance, but it does make us crave the bigger picture. It’s not a film with much depth to it but when it does deal with the thornier hows and whys, it’s interestingly cynical, reflective of living and working in a country where things have been mishandled quite spectacularly. The scenes that work best are the ones that feel less fantastical – a sex scene involving added protection, a wife forcing her husband to burn his clothes after he returns to the house, the horror of waking up with a fever – but it’s perhaps the schlockier ones that act as the sugar sweetening the bitter taste these might leave. Taking elements we’ve come to know so well (from the viral terminology we spout daily to the isolated way we now live) and using them to create an even scarier world is, at times, mightily effective, if also a little bit exploitative to some. In the brief runtime that follows (the film is wisely just 84 minutes long), Mason and his co-writer Simon Boyes attempt to meld together a Romeo & Juliet-lite love story with a sub-Contagion thriller which bravely expands out to an ensemble piece with Demi Moore and Bradley Whitford as a rich, insulated couple selling immunity bracelets, Alexandra D’Addario as a cover-singing YouTuber, Craig Robinson as Apa’s wheeler-dealer boss, Richard Jewell’s Paul Walter Hauser as a disabled veteran and Peter Stormare, in laughably pantomime villain mode as the nefarious head of sanitation.ĭespite the many familiar ingredients of Songbird (some of which start to feel musty by the convoluted last act), there’s an undeniable jolt in seeing a glossy thriller rooted in a version of the grim reality we’ve all been facing this year. He’s hoping to take his girlfriend, Sara (the Disney channel alum Sofia Carson), but she’s trapped in her apartment with family, a precarious predicament that quickly turns dangerous when her grandmother falls ill … Nico (Riverdale’s KJ Apa) is one of the lucky ones, a “munie” allowed to move freely across the desolate city, delivering packages and slowly saving for an escape to Big Sur, where things are somehow magically safe. If you fail the daily “temp test” or you’re close to someone who does then you’re forcibly relocated to a Q-Zone, essentially a concentration camp where you’re left to die. That has led to a strict divide between those who have immunity (which carries a much-sought-after yellow bracelet) and those who don’t (forced to stay indoors at all times). The latest virus is the deadliest yet, with a 56% mortality rate. It’s 2024 and in the Songbird version of events, things haven’t got any better they’ve been getting progressively worse (“It’s the end of the world, bro,” someone tells us in one of the many dour clips shared in the opening montage).
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