Time to reunite with a trippy technological hellscape! After weeks of rumors, late-night Reddit speculating sessions, and annoyed inquiries to Netflix from writers, the streaming service dropped its latest Black Mirror installment this morning: It’s called Bandersnatch, and it’s a stand-alone interactive film. Bandersnatch, I barely know her! you may joke to yourself, but the premise is pretty fun for the hours and hours of content you might end up subjecting yourself to. A young programmer in London in the 1980s (Fionn Whitehead) is hired by a “hit factory for computer games†to adapt a fantasy novel into a game, and this being Black Mirror, he quickly begins to question reality as we know it. Showrunner Charlie Brooker penned the episode, with Will Poulter and Craig Parkinson also starring.
So, how does it work? In typical choose-your-own-adventure fashion, there are stopping points throughout the film where you, the viewer, have to decide what the programmer does — and in the end, there are five different ways the film concludes. Viewing time varies, but on average, it seems 90 minutes is becoming the standard, although it can increase or decrease significantly based on your chosen actions. (There’s likely about five hours of total content.) Netflix notes that Bandersnatch will work on all Android and iOS devices, as well as any updated Netflix app, duh, but unfortunately, it won’t be supported on Chromecast or Apple TV. A moment of silence for all of the writers doing pieces about the film’s Easter eggs today, please.