Songbird (2020)

Directed by: Adam Mason

Written by: Adam Mason, Simon Boyes

Starring: K.J Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare.

A film set in 2024, where a new pandemic named “Covid-23” has ravaged the world and inner cities. Songbird focuses on several individuals who attempt to navigate specific obstacles set in place, including those related to law, society, disease, quarantine, and vigilantes.

For a film focusing on a pandemic, it was not one of the best I have seen, considering Contagion (2011) was a lot better and was way before our current situation with Covid-19, this film focused solely on a young couple who were in love, one trapped in a flat with her sick relative and the other who had a immunity band and also a delivery courier cyclist.

I am unsure whether we are ready for any COVID movies yet, and if we are, this film was unfortunately not one of them. I found it extremely difficult to focus, and given our current situation in the UK, I thought this film would be a lot better; I was disappointed.

However, this film highlighted a future of a pandemic, where the infection has become so bad that people get killed if they are seen leaving their homes, so I guess at the moment we are not in that situation – and hope we never will be. The only people allowed outside their homes are those who are immune to the virus, and they are the ones who deliver parcels to the rich. However, there are also people in the film who are not rich, which raises the question of how they manage to obtain their food and drink, given that they somehow have cupboards full of food and a fridge full of drinks. This makes me wonder how they are acquiring their supplies. Soon enough, it is quickly revealed that the real villain is not the virus, but the Head of Sanitisation, who is introduced early in the film.

So, I was not entirely impressed upon watching this film and found it hard to focus, but I managed to sit through it. I felt that there was no real story behind it, no in-depth information about the new COVID-23 virus, other than what was briefly mentioned at the start with a new report and a camera shot. There had been no further information on it, and it left the viewers guessing whether it is similar to our current situation with COVID-19, with the new mutated strain, and the latest virus from South Africa. There had been no further update on the COVID-23 virusfeatured in this film, which would have allowed viewers to learn more about it and understand the movie a little better, as I would have liked to know a bit more about it.

I rate this film a 2.5 star rating!