Songbird – Film Review
Immune to the COVID-23 virus, a courier races against time to save the woman he loves from a quarantine camp.
Songbird is a movie that has already caused a ton of controversy online. Can you guess why? It’s because it’s essentially about a mutated strand of the ongoing COVID-19 disease in real life. This film’s version of the virus is even deadlier and depicts a couple that is deeply in love and will do anything to stay together, but there is one problem – they are in the midst of the extremely deadly virus and it’s nasty.
This film just felt in such bad taste from the start right to the end. It simply feels too early to make a movie about the coronavirus, and honestly, why do we need a movie about an even deadlier coronavirus? This disease is seriously no joke, and it should absolutely not be exploited for entertainment purposes, yet that’s exactly what Songbird does.
It takes a real-life virus and turns it into entertainment. But a massive problem with the movie is that it’s not entertaining. It’s dreadful to have to sit through. Thankfully it’s not too long at only eighty-five minutes, so you won’t be having to sit down for a long time to watch this film. It does feel considerably longer though.
Courtesy of STXfilms
But I genuinely feel as though a COVID-centric film should never have been made, let alone while we are still in the midst of the real-life pandemic. All of this film just feels so gross and money-hungry and it left a sour taste in my mouth, and not in the way the filmmakers had intended. Songbird tries so hard to be engrossing and emotionally charged but in its attempts to be a powerful film for the ages, it ends up coming across as just plain disrespectful and greedy even.
It makes me wonder why so many big-name actors agreed to sign on to this project too. Craig Robinson, Peter Stormare, Bradley Whitford, and Sofia Carson are just a few of the Hollywood megastars that act in this movie and I honestly don’t have a clue what they saw in this story. Maybe they just needed a little extra money and so they agreed to star in this film. Who knows? It’s probably going to be an unsolved mystery.
But another unsolved mystery, and the biggest one at that, is why Songbird was made in the first place. It just feels like a fear-mongering and dreadful nightmare and one that viewers are not going to want to explore, especially not while we are literally still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Songbird feels like a gross and money-hungry nightmare in all the worst ways. I don’t think anybody asked for a COVID-centered horror-thriller, yet here we are.
Overall Grade: F
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence including some bloody images, sexual material, partial nudity and some strong language
Cast: KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Walter Hauser, Demi Moore, Lia McHugh, Elpidia Carrillo, Michole Briana White
Directed by: Adam Mason
Distributed by: STXfilms
Release Date: December 11, 2020
Running Time: 85 minutes