- Carter Martin
- Feb 10, 2021
- 5 min read
Songbird is a weird movie to talk about.
Pre-production started in March 2020, with Adam Mason and Simon Boyes working on a film based around the COVID-19 Pandemic. They came up with the concept and plotted it out over a weekend before pitching it a few days later. The two wrote the screenplay together and Mason ended up directing it, but I can’t tell if it has any of Mason’s actual directorial input, it feels less like his movie and more like a movie from one of Songbird’s producers, Michael Bay.
Well ok, maybe I’m being too harsh, maybe I just know nothing about Mason, maybe this is how all of his work is, but I do know Bay’s work, and this has almost all of his staples. It has the God-awful jump-cut based editing on useless fight scenes that do nothing but extend what could’ve been a poorly made but at least comprehensible 20 minute short film. It has the camera angles that are almost good, but always end up looking dull. It has the weird and inconsistent colorwork, where they really want the movie to have a warmer yellow look, but so much of the movie is flipping between these cold industrial environments, and super warm outdoor settings, and your eyes are never given time to adjust. This could be played off as being for stylistic purposes, conveying an uncomfortable feeling on purpose, but rather than convey something like that, Songbird just strains your eyes and makes you want to turn it off.
The biggest element Songbird seems to take from Bay is the bad script, it’s not awful in the same way, but it’s still awful. It’s traded in Bay’s horribly boring expository monologues for incredibly stupid and unintentionally hilarious ones. One character, played by Peter Stormare, is given at least 4-5 different monologues throughout the 90 minute runtime, and while all of them are bad, they really do help in figuring out the weird structure of this movie. All of his monologues start after the main characters find either a sense of comfort, or a way to be comfortable, and each ends with him either stabbing someone, trying to stab someone, or taking someone away to show how bad he is. Songbird suggests the ones who are supposed to be protecting people from the deadly virus are corrupt villains who would just send immune people into a quarantine zone because… they’re just bad people?
The movie never really shows why this sort of thing happens, the main villain has almost real motivation besides wanting money and power, but that doesn’t even explain half of his actions. What he claims to do for the money is what would give him power by extending the pandemic, and what he does for power he does because he just… can?
KJ Apa’s character is unbelievably self-absorbed and he’s REWARDED rather than punished, with him getting exactly what he wanted the whole movie. He manages to slip out of so many situations with wayyyy too much ease for a MOTORCYCLE DELIVERYMAN who was just saving up for law school. He manages to survive 2 encounters with the previously mentioned knife-crazy Peter Stormare just by hitting him around a few times before using the worst payoff I have ever seen.
Bradley Whitford is also in this movie, and he exists to serve the only good point, being that sexually abusive and manipulative executives are awful and deserve the absolute worst. As you may have suspected, he plays a sexually abusive and manipulative record exec, who sneaks around the quarantined world with fake immunity tags, while his daughter is suffering from an autoimmune disorder.
Alright so now I’m going to change the topic a little bit to be about why that message about executives means nothing to this movie. I didn’t lie, it would be an important message, but Micheal Bay has a reputation of subtly ruining the careers of young actresses when they speak up about feeling uncomfortable with his oversexualization of them. The most famous example of this is Megan Fox, who’s virtually had no work since she was cut out of the Transformers franchise after making numerous comments about how uncomfortable she was working with Bay. Bay produced this movie, and it makes what would be a good message about how awful the entertainment industry is for young women. It wouldn’t have been very well written, but it still would’ve been a good message to put out there. Bay’s presence makes it mean nothing.
The other performances are forgettable, and all that needs to be said is the characters are dumb and annoying, and the actors aren’t doing a very good job.
Songbird has 3 interconnected plots, and all of them are pretty bad. The A-plot has K.J. Apa’s character embarking on a race against time to sneak his girlfriend out of quarantine by pretending that she’s immune to the virus. Now that sounds like a really stupid idea, so you’d think the movie would punish the main character for this, but he faces zero consequences. He’s actively rewarded for breaking safety measures and putting the woman he’s supposed to love in harm’s way.
The B-plot follows Demi Moore and Bradley Whitford, as Moore does the most to protect their daughter, while Whitford tries to make money by selling black market immunity bracelets, and sexually abuses Alexandria Daddario’s character. This plot is incredibly forgettable, and pretty much exists to pad out the runtime from 30 minutes to 90. Without this entire storyline and its impact on the length of A-plot, this would’ve been a quick 30 minute race against time short film, but instead its 90 minutes long with worthless side plots.
The C-plot is definitely the least interesting, and yet the most realistic in conception. It follows two lonely people, a young singer manipulated by those above her played by Daddario, and a wheelchair bound drone pilot played by Paul Walter Hauser. In concept, I think this would be a great story about love and isolation, and could have some strong messages, but in execution everything it tries to say falls flat on its face, ending up as bad as the other two.
The funniest thing about Songbird is that despite all of this, I enjoy most of the movie, it’s unintentionally hilarious at times. I think there are so many things that really did not need to be in this incredibly overlong movie, but a few of them are so bad that they’re almost worth the extra runtime they take up.
All in all, Songbird is not a good movie. I find it hilarious, but only because it fails so hard. In fact, calling it “not good” is an understatement, Songbird is an awful movie.
Don’t pay money for this Wear a mask Stay indoors
