MIXED REVIEWS

A FEW days before 2018 ended, global internet streaming service Netflix and the people behind sci-fi series

decided to release their most ambitious project yet — an interactive film called which immediately, it caught viewers’ fancy. It presents an intriguing, yet familiar, proposition, especially for those who grew up reading books published by Bantam Books from 1979.

For the Netflix show, people can make choices using their mobile devices, choices that can lead to multiple endings for the story set in 1984 and which follows Stefan Butler (played by

Fionn Whitehead), the people around him, and his video game, Bandersnatch.

is a unique story in that it’s interactive: you the viewer, get to decide what’s going to happen,” Charlie Brooker, creator/writer/producer of the series, said in a featurette uploaded by Netflix on Jan. 3.

is a sci-fi anthology series which started airing in 2011 and is meant to examine the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. The episodes, usually standalones, are set in an alternate timeline and are often dark and satirical.

“Netflix asked us if we’d like to do an interactive story. I knew I wanted to do another period episode and I thought, ‘Well, what if you’re controlling somebody in the past? So it kinda spiraled from there,” Mr. Brooker said.

At first, Mr. Brooker and producer Annabel Jones didn’t want to make an interactive episode and would only do it if it made sense thematically for the show.

“We didn’t want it to feel like it was just a gimmick,” Ms. Jones said.

Thankfully, Mr. Brooker had a suitable script in mind and came up with a feat said to be equivalent to four episodes.

And while Netflix posits that the film itself is only an hour and 30 minutes in length, noted that its entire length spans more than five hours if one takes note of all the choices and all the endings.

“It’s actually complicated behind the scenes but for the viewer it’s fairly straightforward — you are given choices: will you go out the door or jump out the window? But there’s a myriad sort of timelines and story branches you can go down,” Mr. Brooker said.

MOVIE REVIEW

“It was very challenging at every stage. There were points where when working stuff out, it got like trying to do a Rubik’s cube in your head, and I had to literally get up from the desk and kind of walk around the house holding my head,” he said.

This is actually not Netflix’s first time to create an interactive film since in 2017, the company produced a children’s interactive show called

“Part of the excitement in working in Netflix is constantly inventing what is internet TV. There’s a lot responsibility because we are innovating in this whole new form and so one of the things we talked about was interactive content,” Todd Yelin, VP for product at Netflix, said in a separate featurette uploaded in the same account.

He described — the service’s first interactive film for an adult audience — as a film which combined “technology and design and innovation with incredible storytelling.”

While the film received generally favorable reviews — Rotten Tomatoes gave it an average rating of 7.5 out of 10 based on 52 reviews as of Jan. 9 — critics have pointed out that “while marks an innovative step forward for interactive content, its meta narrative can’t quite sustain interest over multiple viewings — though it provides enough trademark tech horror to warrant at least one watch,” said the review aggregator site.

The interactivity aspect garnered favorable to mixed reviews, with David Griffin from calling the decision points “smooth and unobtrusive” while Roisin O’Connor of

called the same points “wearisome” and said it “pulls you out of the story.”

This writer spent the better part of three hours navigating the film on Sunday and is inclined to agree with O’Connor — the decision points do sometimes get tedious and interfere with immersion, especially because of the card which cuts the screen every time a decision has to be made — a card which doesn’t disappear until the timer runs out even if you made your choice in less than two seconds.

It might be nitpicky, but this writer had the chance to play Tobias Weber’s (2016), a downloadable movie/game (available on online game store Steam) billed as “The World’s First Cinematic Interactive Movie,” which