‘Songbird’ Trailer: Michael Bay Ditches Transforming Aliens to Prey on Your Covid Fears
Think that you had enough of Covid-19? The trailer of Michael Bay’s upcoming pandemic thriller, Songbird, suggests that you hold your horses and set your sights straight on Covid-23.
The world certainly does not need another installment of Aubobots squaring off with Decepticons right now, at least not one directed by Michael Bay and features an explosion every five seconds. But the renowned filmmaker is not going to let the global pandemic restrain him from blowing up his fans’ minds, and perhaps so, he had struck a deal with Adam Mason to direct his upcoming Covid-inspired film, Songbird, which he is co-producing.
With the actual cases of Covid-19 still on a relentless climb in the U.S. and across the world, is now the perfect timing, a.k.a. the chance of a lifetime to expose humanity towards a film about an invisible force which they are not even done battling with? I don’t know. But what I know, is that the recently dropped trailer, — though showing a promising level of suspense — does look way off for most of the part. You can check out the trailer of Songbird for yourselves here:
Feeling it now? I kid you not, if I was to be shown just the first minute of the trailer and asked to make my very best guess of what the movie’s about, I would bet with my very last coin from my piggy bank that Songbird is a zombie film. “The virus attacks the brain tissue”. They are referring to the victims by large as “the infected”. People wandering alone in the city risks getting shot on sight, infected or not. Don’t all this look and sound too Raccoon City’ish to you?
The story takes place in United States as the nation enters its 213th-week of lockdown, which to be precise, is about 4.08 years after the nation shuttered its doors. This should bring us to about April 2024, when the new strain of coronavirus also spells a whole new approach towards dating, as experienced by immune citizen Nico (KJ Apa) and Sara (Sofia Carson). Perhaps it is just the world being pushed towards everyone’s edge of insanity, or maybe this is just the artistic direction of Mason, but the authorities in Songbird sure do react to Covid like a proper zombie-level threat. There is a flagging amount of false exaggeration going on there, and the butchered tones of Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ playing at the background doesn’t help, either.
Elsewhere, Demi Moore, Alexandra Daddario and Bradley Whitford fill up the gaps in the cast as citizens stranded in their homes to prevent Songbird from looking like a couple’s self-shot lockdown project. Peter Stormare plays the wicked head of a government body, carrying out sanitizing (read: satanizing) duties from door-to-door of affected properties.
Songbird wrapped-up its filming in August this year, and the North American and UK distribution rights for the film have been acquired by STX Films. No dates have been set for the release of Songbird so far, but to stay true towards the essence of the film, STX films should really show a clear middle finger to the theaters and spread the film exclusively on streamers instead.
At this moment, I still do not know what to really expect from Songbird, but my only hope is that “the infected” don’t start biting and growling when the film passes its middle mark.
Originally published at https://www.thefilmaddict.com on October 30, 2020.
