Riverdale star KJ Apa’s controversial pandemic-set thriller Songbird is now available in the UK.
Set in 2024, the movie centres on courier Nico (Apa) and Sara (Descendants star Sofia Carson), who fall in love against the backdrop of a “dystopian, scary world” in which COVID-19 has mutated into an even deadlier strain and resulted in 110 million deaths worldwide.
The pair have never met however, due to strict lockdown rules.
Directed by Adam Mason, it’s a fairly star-studded affair, what with American Gods’ Peter Stomare, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Craig Robinson, Baywatch’s Alexandra Daddario, The Handmaid’s Tale star Bradley Whitford and Demi Moore rounding out the cast.
“It’s a romantic movie about two people who want to be together, but they can’t,” Mason, who also co-wrote the movie with Simon Boyes, told EW back in October. “It’s Romeo and Juliet, but they’re separated by her front door and by the virus.”
When the trailer was unveiled around the same time, the outing was quickly branded “insensitive” and “disrespectful”, as many people pointed out that watching a film about a global crisis while still living through a global crisis was low down on their list of things to do.
“This is quite possibly one of the s***tiest attempts at cashing in on human suffering. Whoever makes this movie should be ashamed. This isn’t needed, nor wanted,” one scathing viewer reacted on Twitter.
The movie itself didn’t go down much better when it was released either, garnering mostly negative reactions from critics – including Digital Spy’s own – and landing just 10% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
But, you know, it’s there if you fancy escaping the real world to watch something that depicts… a heightened version of what is happening in the actual real world right now…
Source: digitalspy.com