The most unnerving moments in Michael Bay’s pandemic thriller ‘Songbird’
Think COVID-19 is bad? Just wait till you see COVID-23!
Produced by Michael Bay, the sci-fi thriller “Songbird” – filmed in L.A. during the pandemic – is an audacious and unnerving extrapolation of our current viral situation. So good thing a vaccine is on its way, because we don’t want this post-apocalyptic landscape at all.
“Songbird” (streaming now on digital platforms such as Apple TV and Vudu) stars K.J. Apa (“Riverdale”) as an immune bicycle courier named Nico who delivers packages and works to get black-market immunity passes so he and his girlfriend Sara (Sofia Carson) can escape L.A. And why wouldn’t they? The city’s in its 213th week of lockdown, a mutated form of the virus is airborne, attacks brain tissue and is lethal within 24 hours, plus the global death toll is up to 110 million. Not great!
Wear masks and social distance, kids, because “Songbird” is a bonkers cautionary tale to be safe out there. Here are the five freakiest takeaways of the film as we navigate through our own version of the pandemic.
Beware of the department of sanitation
Martial law has been enacted in L.A. but it’s not the police you have to worry about: It’s the sanitation guys in hazmat suits led by the ruthless Emmett Harland (Peter Stormare). In “Songbird,” they act as fascistic law enforcement, taking infected people to quarantine zones (aka concentration camps) all over the city, where the conditions are barbaric and no one comes back alive.
Your smartphone doubles as your doctor
They’re not just for calling and Zooming anymore: Each morning, residents are forced to take a mandatory “temp check” on their phone to see if they have the virus. If the app says you have a fever, your lungs are compromised and/or your brain shows an anomaly, sanitation is on its way to forcefully remove you from your residence. Worse, they take the whole household, not just the sick folks.
Rich people still find a way to be greedy
“Songbird” is filled with cynical aspects but this is one of the more callous: A wealthy couple played by Demi Moore and Bradley Whitford sell valuable canary-yellow immunity passes for $150,000 a pop. There are some good intentions involved but the haves still grifting the have-nots during the apocalypse is sketchy to the max. And yet it’s also one of the most believable aspects of a far-reaching film.
Safe sex looks like a horror movie
While people are supposed to stay in their homes, late-night hookups are still a thing. When Whitford’s character meets up with his mistress, a singer (Alexandra Daddario) whose webstreams entertain a locked-down audience, he’s wearing an oxygen mask and gloves and she’s clad in plastic boots, a lace mask (which probably doesn’t do a whole lot for protection) and a face shield. Add in the fact that he has to burn his clothes afterward and pandemic trysts prove to be complicated.
Immunity pretty much makes you a pariah
Nico can’t catch COVID-23 yet his life’s not exactly peachy. He has a Romeo-and-juliet thing with Sara as they pine for each other on opposite sides of a door, is called “munie scum” by sanitation workers (probably tired of wearing biohazard outfits), and lives a life of isolation and many showers as he’s “coated in COVID” just being outside and can’t go near any loved ones. In other words, he’s the ultimate superspreader.