If nothing else, the pandemic has separated the true constants from the variables. We know now what an America apocalypse will look like. There will be no overgrown highways, no roving motorcycle gangs. Instead, militarized cops and sheriff’s deputies will fight jurisdictional turf wars for the right to shoot you for jaywalking. Masses of the dead will be buried in caskets delivered by Amazon. The only entertainment will be Disney casting news. In Congress, the liberal wing will descend into internal squabbling about how to best honor the memory of John McCain.
Compared to the kind of grotesque potentialities that don’t require any change of present social order, the mid-2020s future envisioned in Adam Mason’s low-budget sci-fi item Songbird seems simple. The country has been ravaged by another pandemic: the more lethal COVID-23. Los Angeles is under permanent lockdown, and daily health checks are mandatory, the sick carted off to the ominous Q-Zone by armed sanitation workers in yellow hazmat suits. Only a small number of the blessedly immune are allowed out in the streets, leading to a lucrative black market in counterfeit immunities. We already know that we’re dealing with an alternate reality here, because whatever our nightmare will be, it isn’t going to involve a totalitarian public health infrastructure.
Not that any thought has gone into this film. Shot in July, it has the dubious honor of being the first American movie to come out of the pandemic—the first to be conceived, filmed, and released in the current climate. That it happens to have been produced under the imprimatur of Michael Bay dangles the possibility of poor taste, but unfortunately, bombast and conspicuous consumption are nowhere to be found. In fact, Songbird looks like any other unexceptional direct-to-streaming title, with a few warehouse-industrial locations and a supporting cast of familiar (and presumably very available) faces who spend most of the movie Steven Seagal-style, sitting in place.
KJ Apa (a.k.a. Riverdale’s Archie) stars as Nico, a virus-immune bicycle courier whose days mostly consist of delivering packages to various fortified Beverly Hills compounds for his boss, Lester (Craig Robinson), and chatting with Sara (Sofia Carson), the girlfriend he’s never actually met face to face. The reasons for this are pretty wonky. The film reiterates the idea that the immune can still get other people sick via particles on their hair and clothes, but since Nico never interacts with any of his customers (or anyone at all), there doesn’t seem to be much difference between immunity and being an asymptomatic carrier.
Regardless, it’s a metaphor, hewing to the rule that the most bogus speculative tomorrows are the ones that imagine that the biggest problem in the future is going to be loneliness or an inability to express our feelings—rather than, say, having said expressions taken over by data-gathering corporations that already owned a large chunk of our private lives before this whole thing began. It’s all about connection, as portrayed by a small, inelegantly juggled ensemble of housebound, alienated Angelenos.
Among these are Nico’s favorite customers, the ritzy Griffins: Piper (Demi Moore), who’s dealing in phony immunity passes, and her sleazy record-producer husband, William (Bradley Whitford), who has continued carrying on an affair during the pandemic, venturing out with an air tank, burning his clothes when he returns. As a possible cartoonish parody of the modern elite, this is a lot more interesting than anything that happens with the blandly attractive romantic leads. But it becomes clear early on that, despite its cheap thriller trappings, the film is headed only in the blandest direction, basically a love story of the kind traditionally told in commercials for tech companies and phones.
This isn’t enough to sustain five minutes of video, let alone a feature, so Mason fills the rest with footage of Nico biking around (which also looks kind of like an ad) and throws in some artificial stakes, which come by way of Peter Stormare, who hams it up with maximum volume and spittle as an immune, Gestapo-esque inspector for the all-powerful Department Of Sanitation. (Not that it matters much, but Los Angeles doesn’t have a Department Of Sanitation; it has a Sanitation Bureau.)
Watching Stormare attempt to yell the movie awake is about as close to entertainment as it gets, apart from the occasional cringe factor exemplified by the film’s curtain line, “We weren’t just delivering packages—we were delivering hope.” To be honest, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for such an example of cash-in pandemic-sploitation to arrive. If there’s a warning to be heeded here, it’s this: The next one might be worse.
109 Comments
I get The Point of the first paragraph but I have no idea where people get the idea that John McCain is at the top of liberal’s priority lists right now.
I think that was more metaphorical based on past actions from them. Which, fair. I’ve had to sit and watch many liberals of late slobber all over the memories of the evil dead, like Barbara Bush or McCain. I’m pretty tired of the G. Dubs apologia as well from purported liberals.
To me that line spoke of the stupid and irrationally continuing idea of “when they go low, we go high” in a society where there currently is no bottom anymore.
I get where you’re coming from, but at the same time it’s pretty de rigeur. Even Bernie and AOC made memorial posts about McCain, no one on Capitol Hill is gonna go “lol rest in piss fucker”
“lol rest in piss fucker”That would have been awesome.
“The problem with pissing on my grave is that eventually you run out of piss” – Margaret Thatcher
The way the English drink, that can’t be true
Gods know I said it about Scalia when he kicked the bucket.
They’re liberals, but “liberal” gets conflated with “compassionate” or even “decent in any way.” If a conservative is saying “fuck the poor” then a liberal just says “fuck the poor, but nicely.”
You’ll note all the Nazis are specifically decrying “The Left” as the bad guys, not so much “liberals” or “libruls”. The left may not be the best, but they aren’t all bad, and they for damn sure aren’t liberal.
Yes – everyone seems to have forgotten all the war crimes. Suddenly even Colin Powell is “OK”, because he spoke out against Trump.The old ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ thing.These fucking guys lied to everyone and got how many hundreds of thousands killed – for basically no reason. Chaney and Rove, all but forgotten. But what can you expect from a country that gave Nixon a hero’s funeral.This is nothing short of a right-wing coup. These people care not for democracy or even America, they want power and money.I’m to the point of…IDK…violence? All I despise I feel I may become. But what am I supposed to do? Stand by and do nothing? What if SCOTUS somehow goes along with this scheme and overturns the election. What do we do? I don’t feel that it’s impossible – with what I’ve seen in the last five years.
John McCain’s dead?
Yeah I’d like IV to show us where congressional Democrats have messed up the response to COVID because of infighting about John McCain. C’mon Iggy you’re above this kind of Jezebel-ish political nonsense
I think he’s saying that America is swinging so far to the right that John McCain will soon be considered a liberal. It’s already happening, frankly. All of the Trumppets are decrying him.
Or 2025, or whenever this movie happens. Nobody gives a fuck about McCain now, why in 5 years?
Because people don’t know what the word “liberal” means anymore. They’re looking for “centrist” or “moderate.”
Because it beats the NeoLiberals in the DNC actually doing something, like forcing a COVID Stimulus Bill down Mitch McConnell’s throat and laughing while he chokes to death on it, Cosmia.
But that might just be me….
I’ve seen some of Adam Mason’s films and they are uniformly terrible. Good to see he’s keeping up the status quo.
Somebody send him a memo:“Plague’s a bit tasteless at the moment…”
“We weren’t just delivering packages—we were delivering hope.”
Until this line I thought the Death Stranding parallels may have been unintentional…
What’s that Nike looking game where you’re an Asian lady parkour delivery person? At least the people here know what they’re delivering.
Mirror’s Edge, I believe.
The first movie inspired by the pandemic is here, and it sucksSo what you’re saying is it’s an accurate reflection of the current situation.
Ignatiy giving a withering D to a shitty movie: Expected but always welcome.Ignatiy giving a withering D to America: Not expected but cathartic.
Um, didn’t Host come out like six months ago?
Reads like the MAGA crowd is gonna eat this up, screaming that this is what the Libs really want to do.Never mind this is fiction.
Yeah, I honestly think this article could have been harsher because this sounds like straight up anti-science propaganda disguised as sci-fi.
The ideology sounds so gross. Like, quarantine (a key aspect of government public health response) is presented as necessarily fascist and Auschwitz-y, and it romanticises the gig economy. Get absolutely ten-carat fucked.
i was curious if this movie also has the distinction of being the first where a “modern” gig worker is the protagonist, but i dont know enough about movies to say
I think that honor goes to Stuber.
Wasn’t there a Joseph Gordon Levitt movie where he played a bike messenger?Like, I’m pretty sure I paid money to see a movie like that in a theater, but I don’t remember its title or anything about the movie other than that they only had permission to shoot on the same three blocks of Midtown and they didn’t even bother to CGI out the street signs, so the movie is like 90 minutes of JGL biking down the same three blocks while acting like he’s going somewhere.
Yeah, I think Zod was pissed at him or something and killed a bunch of civilians with his laser pee.
Premium Rush. I don’t know why I remember that film considering I never saw it.
Double Rush, egerz?
“the first where a “modern” gig worker is the protagonist”Quicksilver features Kevin Bacon as a stock exchange floor trader who crashes out and takes up work as a bicycle messenger. It’s from 1986.
Cillian Murphy’s character was a bike courier in 28 Days Later. So maybe it’s an homage to that pandemical apocalypse, for some reason…
He was exactly the sort of subcontracted bicycle courier that the gig economy all but wiped out in London by rapidly devaluing the service.
Jesus Christ. Have you never watched or read any dystopian sci fi before? This is all pretty standard tropes. Evil government, evil corporations and gig workers of some definition are pretty cliche and the idea is never supposed to be comforting, but to induce dread and paranoia. Everything isn’t a right wing boogeyman trying to spread propaganda. Calm the fuck down.
I didn’t say anything was a right wing bogeyman. But if you want to talk about science fiction I put it to you that all science fiction carries an ideology, and SF in particular generally aims to unpack something about the relationship between humankind and the things they build (be they tools, systems, structures, symbols, whatever). A film in which the gig economy is romanticised is necessarily taking an ideological position about that structure. A film which draws a parallel between, well, anything and the operations of the Third Reich is necessarily taking an ideological position. A film which equates quarantine with big brother is necessarily taking a position. I’m entirely calm, but thanks for your reply.
Seems weird they were able to get Demi Moore and Bradley Whitford for this (Peter Stormare will, of course, ham it up for anyone with a hundred bucks to spare, and God bless him for that).
Standards don’t apply in a pandemic — and anyway, Demi Moore was in Nothing but Trouble, which…I already regret remembering. (I’m actually more surprised by Craig Robinson; I’m sure he’s done some terrible movies in the past, but off the top of my head, all I can think of are the good ones.)
Wasn’t he in Dragon Wars? Ehem.
Ha, apparently so. Looks like it came out two months after Knocked Up. And it does look awful.Wait…Retta from Parks & Rec was in it, too? I wonder if the experience informed Donna’s live-tweeting of Death Canoe.
I saw Nothing But Trouble with my dad…I think he assumed Demi Moore would get naked. I assumed it wouldn’t be a literal garbage pile of a movie.
Why would your dad want to watch a film where someone gets naked with you?
I’m going to assume you meant, “Why would your dad want to see someone naked in a movie, while you were there with him.”Very specific reasons why implying something else would be a very awful thing to say.
Yeah like why would you want to watch your dad orgasm? That’s what I meant.
Are you kidding? Watching your dad masturbate in a movie theatre is valuable father-son bonding.
Who are you El Hijo Del Pee Wee Herman?
Personally, I think it is an inexplicably entertaining garbage pile.
In the late 1980s Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd ingested so much cocaine that their massive egos manifested in human form and said, “Here are the worst fucking ideas we have. Put them all in movie – don’t leave a single one out. You’re so talented you can totally make them work.”When they emerged the next morning from their suite at the Burbank Marriott they had the first draft (aka the shooting script) for Nothing but Trouble.
They had cocaine in the 1980s in Hollywood?!? They hid it so well!!!
I just realized I’ve always confused Nothing But Trouble (1991; I have not seen it) with Nothing in Common (1986; an early failed attempt for Tom Hanks to try to shed his comedic vibes with a drama about him trying to connect with his aging father played by a dying Jackie Gleason in one of his last roles)
That movie wigged me out bc ***spoilers*** his feet turned black from the dya-beetus.
That probably wasn’t the movie for a grade school me, but neither was “I Spit On Your Grave” but I choked it down anyway.
Nothing in Common wasn’t bad… it’s no Philadelphia, but it was a decent mid-‘80s middle-brow dramedy.
Yeah, I guess “failed” is somewhat unfair, although it wasn’t the leap into drama that Hanks was looking for (which he got with Philadelphia) so much so that these days he’s seen mostly as a serious actor and not a comedian.
NARRATOR: (VO)
We were both wrong.
thats this gem, right?
Whitford is the surprise here, he seems to have his pick of interesting projects, and I guess Craig Robinson could use the cash since he doesn’t make huge bank per appearance. But this is a completely wasted cast.
And with Whitford’s vocally left-wing politics, it seems odd that he would sign on to Kill Fauci.
Maybe Bradley Whitford’s finally embracing his Inner Vincent Price…?
Stormare is like Danny Trejo – we all love him but if we see that he’s in a movie we know it’s almost definitely going to suck.
Yes, but like Nic Cage, if they’re in the movie?Sucking or not, you know they’ll be fun for however long the Producers paid them for!
Demi Moore was also in the godawful ‘Brave New World’ adaptation that Peacock did. She may have entered the ‘Nicholas Cage role selection’ portion of her career… “Oh, they’re offering me a part? Sure, why not.”
Do you think this movie is a step up or a step down for her after Master Ninja 1?
“her sleazy record-producer husband, William (Bradley Whitford)“This is a note of hope in a dark future, that despite the gig workers and corporate overlords the world (post-apocalyptic, even!) still has a place for the classic sleazy record producer. I hope he hasn’t been reduced to pawning the gold records that no doubt line his study, and at some point suckers some crappy bedroom pop wiener kid into a terrible contract via Zoom.
“In Congress, the liberal wing will descend into internal squabbling about how to best honor the memory of John McCain.”*chef’s kiss*“I can’t believe the leader of the idiot party is disrespecting the legacy of one of the obstructionist idiots from the idiot party!”
He broke with the Republicans like 2% of the time! He was a maverick!
And broke with Trump less than 10 percent of the time, if memory serves.
Damn, if the AV Club had not decided to cancel their “Worst Movies of the Year” list, this sounds like it would have been a shoo-in. At least it can be added to the best of list of IV’s eviscerations-disguised-as-reviews. So many great lines, but my favorite was“basically a love story of the kind traditionally told in commercials for tech companies and phones.” Very evocative! Hey Iggy, did you hear they are making a fourth Olympus Has Fallen movie? When it comes out you better get your ass back to Fuckheadistan and give us another classic review!
I’m still chafed they’re not doing the Worst Of. Yes, yes, we all need to be uplifting and uplifted right now but that kind of catharsis can be healthy.
I’m working on a personal worst-of post, which I usually don’t bother with, to put up at my own site, for that exact desire for catharsis. I saw some bad stuff this year. Including this movie!
Attaboy! I’m in.
We need a link, now.
Seriously. Trump can get Time’s person of the year but we can’t handle a little “Worst of the Year” feature? Guess I’m a snowflake after all.
I don’t think there are enough films being released to properly make a decent ‘worst of’ (or even ‘best of’) list. I mean, major releases have been… let’s see… Bloodshot. New Mutants. Tenet. And each of those could legitimately claim slots on both the best and worst lists, since they were all aggressively, defiantly ‘meh’. Of the three, only Bloodshot at least seemed to know what it was. But Vin Diesel’s presence told you all that.
I assume that’s really the main reason, even though they said it was because they didn’t think they needed to add negativity to a shit year. But if you factor in movies that went to digital rental or straight to streaming, I’m sure there is plenty of garbage that could fill out a bottom 20 or at least a bottom 10.
Um, a fuckton more movies than that have been released this year. I easily have a top 20
oh, I know. I mean, after I posted, I thought of ‘Mulan’, and ‘Soul’ (again, both landing with aggressive shrugs from the public) and realized that if I googled stuff, I could certainly find a bunch more movies that were, technically, released this year. But that’s just it. I’d have to google it. The stuff they pushed straight to streaming, especially over the summer once it became apparent that there would be no *real* wide-release blockbusters this year, was all mid-to-low tier filler, rom-coms and already-doomed titles like ‘The Hunt’, all of which landed with essentially zero impact. In ‘normal’ years, even if you hadn’t SEEN the D’s or F’s reviewed here, you’d probably heard of them outside of the review. Not so this year. These releases slunk (slinked?) into whatever open theaters were around, maybe, and then immediately dropped onto VOD or Hulu or Amazon, or wherever and sank with nary a trace. It seems unsporting to put those on a worst-of list. Like ranking late-period Steven Segal direct-to-video stuff with, you know, ACTUAL movies. It’s kicking them while they’re down.
I see. You were talking more big, mainstream releases. That makes more sense. There were so many good horror films this year, though!
No ‘Worst of’? Tell me they’re still doing the Worst Band Names?
That might still be coming, I just remember they specifically said no “Worst Movies” list this year.
First movie inspired?Going by the date, this at least preceded it by the looks of it.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/13/corona-zombies-film-full-moon-features(Mon 13 Apr 2020 10.03)
Yeah there are a *ton* of low-budget COVID-19-inspired movies shot and released this year from all corners of the globe. I guess none of the AV Club writers download bootleg movies and see all the schlock that’s available.
But this is all from an article in the Guardian!
Note that the person with the mask and sanitizer is the zombie, and the poor blonde white victim is the persecuted one.
I knew Charles Band wouldn’t let us down!If there’s money to be made with a trashy knock-off of a current crisis, he’s your man….
>the more lethal COVID-23.
Whoa. It’s like plus four on what we’re dealing with, huh?
“We weren’t just delivering packages—we were delivering hope.” no, no, no. should’ve been “we weren’t just delivering packages – we were delivering DEATH!!!!” (b/c they were still contagious even if immune.)
With every new movie my conviction grows that American film makers are such shallow thinkers that they don’t have control of their own film’s ‘subtext’ messaging. I remember when ‘Parasite’ came out people gasped ‘Wow, a film with multiple layers of meaning all carefully shaped by the film maker!’ And then nobody in the US tried to emulate it.
Well, one thing that’s pretty unique about Parasite is that there’s no real preconceived moral viewpoint. The movie isn’t really preaching overtly to you, simply relating a story.
When I watched it it reminded me a lot of Buñuel and I saw that many other people saw the parallels as well: a moral story where there is no moral because the evil guy is society.
Well – most commercial American film-makers. I’d argue there are at least some left in this country making deeper movies with real subtext. Kelly Reichardt and PT Anderson come to mind.
Never understood the hate for McCain, he literally saved Obamacare all by himself.
I know, it was a 99-1 vote but the bill was still defeated somehow.
And spent a lifetime in power voting against everyone having Healthcare. What a guy!
Who else had the strength to stand up to Amtrak?
The phrase “We weren’t just delivering packages—we were delivering hope” will be Amazon’s defense at their war crimes tribunal after their eventual global coup. This coup will fail because Elon Musk will buy out Amazon mid-coup and insist every product they ship is packaged in a cardboard replica of his own face, completely tanking their profit margins. There’s my apocalyptic fiction for the day. Also, it’s criminal to have a movie with Bradley Whitfield and Peter Stormare and have it be less than awesome.
Why cant Alexandra Daddario just become the star she has the potential to be.Stop making shit movies like this, and the other nonsense she puts out.
“We already know that we’re dealing with an alternate reality here, because whatever our nightmare will be, it isn’t going to involve a totalitarian public health infrastructure.”Are you sure? Can you look into the future?
I look forward to The Flophouse covering this in a few months.
Shot in July, it has the dubious honor of being the first American movie to come out of the pandemic—the first to be conceived, filmed, and released in the current climate.I guess AMERICAN is key, here. Otherwise, Shudder would like a word.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12749596/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0Watch Host. It’s a delight!
Thanks, Biden!
I always appreciate when movies produced by Michael Bay aren’t referred to as Micheal Bay Movies. No one can perfectly replicate the chaotic transcendence of a genuine Michael Bay Movie.
I would have thought “Host” was the 1st movie inspired by the pandemic…? Am I wrong? For what it’s worth, Host was way better than I thought it would be
I let out a genuine laugh when I read “COVID-23.”Feels like a self-serious take on that gauche “Super AIDS” joke I was constantly hearing back in the day.
“To be honest, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for such an example of cash-in pandemic-sploitation to arrive.”this came out in early April 2020 and counts towards that description you give..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_Zombies I personally like this bit from the Corona Zombies IMDB page.
“
One of the first filmed productions about Covid-19 and the 2020 global
health pandemic. The first full length feature film was Mostafa
Keshvari’s ‘Corona’ (2020) which premiered at the Rhode Island Film
Festival on 8th August 2020. The made for TV ‘Love in the Time of
Corona: A Comedy’ (2020) was the first television series and was first
broadcast on 19th March 2020. The London set ‘ShoPaapaa’ (2020) is the
first full length British feature film about Covid-19, and had its world
premiere on 21st October 2020 at the Adelaide Film Festival, just two
days before the global streaming premiere of ‘Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm’ (2020) on 23rd October 2020, Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Borat’
sequel, which also covers the coronavirus. In 2020, there are no less
than seven filmed productions entitled ‘Love in the Time of Corona’ /
‘Love in the Time of Coronavirus’ – these titles being derived from the
title of the Gabriel García Márquez novel and later film ‘Love in the
Time of Cholera’. ‘Songbird’ (2020) is reportedly the ‘’first feature
film to be made during COVID-19 in Los Angeles’’ and is the first major
Hollywood movie about the Coronavirus.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11766262/?ref_=tt_sims_tti
Lester Craig. Craig Lester. Craigslister?
$19.99 to rent? Hahahaaaa. No.