After seven months of fear, anxiety, distrust, and a depleted sense of hope, how about a movie that takes all that and turns it up to 11? In the first trailer for Songbird, director Adam Mason imagines the United States in 2022, a nation decimated by four years of pandemic and the emergence of the deadlier COVID-23 virus, ruled by a government in the process of forcing all infected citizens into quarantine camps known as Q-zones in an act of martial law.
Aside from strip-mining the nation’s already exhausted psyche for film fodder in addition to throwing nightmare fuel on the fire of conspiracy theorists’ already-fiery anti-mask sentiments, the film also stars KJ Apa as Nico, a COVID-immune bike messenger on a mission to reunite with his love, Sara, played by Sofia Carson, who is in physical lockdown. Demi Moore, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, and Alexandra Daddario round out the cast.
While the trailer’s YouTube description rails against “the forces of oppression,†personified by Peter Stormare’s “corrupt head of the city’s ‘sanitation’ department’†in charge of dragging citizens forcibly from their homes, don’t worry: Songbird itself was shot entirely in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving us hope that no matter how bad this pandemic gets, at least some people will still be able to profit off our collective despair.
Oh, and let’s not even get into the use of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.â€