The Trailer for the ‘Black Mirror’ Film Is a ‘Mind-Mangling’ Nightmare

After a month of rumors, leaks, and vague details cribbed from Korean websites, Netflix has finally released the first official trailer for the upcoming Black Mirror movie, Bandersnatch—and the thing looks like a complete and utter mindfuck.

The minute-and-a-half-long trailer and its accompanying plot synopsis confirm a lot of what we already knew about the secretive project: Yes, it's set in the mid-1980s. Yes, it's about a video game programmer played by Dunkirk's Fionn Whitehead. Yes, it follows Whitehead's character down a Cronenbergian rabbit hole "as he adapts a sprawling fantasy novel into a video game and soon faces a mind-mangling challenge."

But Netflix has still left a few pieces of information frustratingly vague—namely, is this a goddamn choose-your-own-adventure story, or what?

Netflix already teased an interactive Black Mirror episode coming in December, and since Bandersnatch is the only Black Mirror-adjacent thing set to hit the streaming service before 2019, all signs point to it being the project. Plus, a recent leak appeared to reveal that the Black Mirror movie had over five hours of footage, which would make sense with the various narrative threads of a CYOA story.

But if Bandersnatch really is Netflix's first foray into something as ambitious as an interactive feature film, the streaming service isn't selling it that way in the trailer. But there are still some clues: First, the trailer specifically avoids referring to Bandersnatch as a movie, instead using the phrase "A Netflix Event" (even though an unearthed landing page for the movie called it a "Netflix Film"). And the trailer's clips of Whitehead slowly losing his goddamn mind are also intercut with text like "Change Your Mind" and "Change Your Life," which feel like cryptic nods to the viewer taking control of the story. Or not! Who knows!?

Luckily, we won't have to wait long to find out the truth. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch will drop on Netflix Friday, December 28, so get ready to waste some serious hours choosing your own dystopian Black Mirror nightmare this weekend. Until then, watch the trailer above and relax.

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