‘Songbird’ Review: Exploiting a Real Life Crisis for a Fictional Failure
THE WORDS ‘CORONAVIRUS ACTION-ROMANCE THRILLER PRODUCED BY MICHAEL BAY’ EXCEED EXPECTATIONS IN THE WORST POSSIBLE Manner. THIS MOVIE IS EVERY BIT AS TERRIBLE AS YOU THINK IT IS, AND DOWNRIGHT OFFENSIVE TO THE VICTIMS OF COVID-19.
Defining moments in history have, and will, always be documented as much by art as by the news of their time or the history books themselves. It is, therefore, not unprecedented - nor, in and of itself, unacceptable - for a film to be made in the midst or immediate wake of those defining moments that provides an additional way for people to contextualize, cope with, and move beyond them. However, all of that goes out the window in the face of a tone-deaf, exploitative nightmare such as 2020’s latest cinematic abomination, Songbird, directed by Adam Mason (Blood River) and produced by Platinum Dunes, Invisible Narratives, and Catchlight Studios, with Platinum Dunes’ Michael Bay also receiving the film’s top producer credit.
Songbird is set in the imagined near-future of 2024 Los Angeles, depicting the nightmare scenario outcome of COVID-19: 8 million deaths within one year; people confined solely to their residences, save for those who are immune; anyone else venturing from their homes being shot on sight; anyone who tests positive being condemned to a quarantine zone; a virus that has mutated so frequently and to such a huge degree that it is now called COVID-23; and a city that has been locked down for four straight years. In the midst of all of this, the designated hero of the story is an immune courier named Nico (KJ Apa), who must rescue his girlfriend (Sofia Carson) after her grandmother dies of the virus, so they can escape the government before she gets thrown into quarantine. Songbird frames this as being the all-important issue, that these two people deserve their “freedom” and that anyone else be damned.
Right off the bat, the film’s main plot is a slap in the face to those who have suffered through this virus, and not just those who have lost loved ones: for nine months, hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people worldwide have locked themselves down, followed the rules, sacrificed their normal way of living, and have worked together to keep their families safe. They have done this despite there being just as many people wantonly disobeying guidelines and, through actions that can be described no more kindly than as “sheer stupidity”, have arguably extended lockdowns and caused more infections and, as a result, more deaths. Songbird insists that the latter are heroes, that those who endanger others for their own selfish reasons are the ones doing the right thing while those who attempt to contain and combat the virus are evil.
Of course, no one with any common sense would buy that on paper, so the film insists on creating absolutely cartoonish villains, part of a wildly out-of-control character roster, none of whom get enough screentime or care to be properly developed in the 84-minute runtime. Peter Stormare chews the scenery apart - almost literally - as a government worker who doesn’t just quarantine the infected: he stabs them to death with a switchblade. Bradley Whitford’s character, and his wife (Demi Moore) program fake immunity bracelets - allowing anyone to pass as an immune person - for profit, and the former is even cheating with an aspiring young singer (Alexandra Daddario) who he treats abusively and possessively. In the midst of all of this, there’s also Nico’s boss (Craig Robinson) who frequently enlists paraplegic veteran Dozer (Paul Walter Hauser) to monitor Nico and the other couriers via drone. As if Songbird isn’t already stuffed to the brim, yet another subplot is created where Dozer and Daddario’s singer form a bond over FaceTime.
Now, based on at least some of the names mentioned above, you might expect Songbird to at least redeem itself through the performances of its cast, but even that provides no respite. Apa might be serviceable in Riverdale, but here he provides all the charisma of a wooden plank doing a Shane Dawson impersonation. Stormare is so over-the-top that his performance itself breaks immersion, and Whitford - arguably the greatest actor here, and therefore the most wasted - is given absolutely nothing to do until his final moments of screentime, where he suddenly explodes with seemingly no direction, screaming nonsense to the last. The only miniscule positive comment to be made is that Walter Hauser - his abilities apparently more appreciated post-Richard Jewell - was allowed to explore parts of his personality other than “your character is an idiot”, but his character is so thin and in so little of the movie that he doesn’t get to do anything with that opportunity.
Not only are these characters uninteresting and unmemorable, but all of the different plot threads do nothing but send the film on dead-end tangents, despite the thin effort made to tie everyone together. It’s as if Mason, along with his co-screenwriter Simon Boyes, were attempting to make Magnolia out of COVID-19, and instead wound up with another Crash, except even worse. One has to wonder how much of this is really their fault, however: Bay’s name sticks out among the credits for Songbird like a sore thumb, and many of its problems are par for the course in many of the films the latter has directed. It’s interesting that Platinum Dunes are behind this mess, as they are also responsible for the similar travesty that is the Purge franchise: Songbird plays like a rejected Purge sequel whose script has been Alt-F’d to replace the purge itself with the coronavirus.
On the filmmaking front, Songbird fares no better. As one of the most populous cities in the Western hemisphere and the home of Hollywood, thousands of films are set in Los Angeles: it feels pretty safe to say that none have ever made the city - a place with gorgeous weather, beaches, oceanside vistas, and an impressive skyline - look greyer, browner, and uglier than Songbird. This might have something to do with the fact that the film looks like it was shot on a smartphone… that is, when it isn’t being shot through Ring doorbells, surveillance cameras, laptops running FaceTime, or Dozer’s drone cameras.
Songbird is one of the most excruciating visual experiences not only of the year, but perhaps even of all time. Mason and his cinematographer, Jacques Jouffret, insist on virtually the entire movie using handheld shots, to say nothing of the incessant ultra-closeups and, during the bland action sequences, incomprehensible quick-cutting. There’s a particular sequence where an unarmed Nico is being chased by multiple goons wearing tactical gear and armed with machine guns that suffers from all the aforementioned issues and is even set in pitch darkness to assist you in not knowing what is happening. To cap it all off, Nico is saved by the intervention of a random character who can only be described as Deus Ex Homeless Guy (Paul Sloan), who helps him knock the goons out one by one before disappearing from the film.
It’s one thing for a film to be bad, and Songbird is surely a terrible film; but for all of the ways in which Songbird utterly fails, the central premise of taking a generic romance story and setting it in the midst of one of the defining post-World War II crises that humanity has faced, while humanity is still facing it and approaching it with such unabashed flippancy, unclear commentary, and tone-deaf optics deserves to be the central point of derision. For anyone who saw the trailer back in October, it should be noted that the backlash Songbird received at the time was misplaced: this film is far, far worse, and far more insensitive. It’s a strong contender to be named the worst film of 2020, and it’s conceivable to see it making the shortlist when people regroup in 2029 to determine the worst of the entire decade.