![]() ![]() With the glorious exception of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” no other moviefilm has worked harder to make lemonade out of this lemon year, and while “Songbird” sure feels like some hot and bothered Republican fear-mongering about the future that Dr. ![]() There are recognizable actors here, and some of them even share locations, move through locked-off streets, and engage in boringly generic shootouts that are bad for reasons that have nothing to do with social distancing. That ultra-accelerated schedule is both a feature and a bug: There’s a raw, B-movie thrill to the experience of watching a (relatively) lavish, Michael Bay-produced thriller that was unambiguously made during and about “these uncertain times,” and the worm-brained shittiness of the story’s dystopian approach to public health has a perverse way of amplifying that grindhouse appeal. The project announces its own topicality before the studio company logos have even played out during the opening credits, as snippets of news audio bark at us about the death toll of COVID-23 (a mutated coronavirus that’s evolved to attack brain tissue and kill people within 48 hours of infection), and not a single minute of the slapdash movie that follows allows you to forget that it was conceived, pitched, written, shot, edited, and released since lockdown started in March. Adam Mason’s schlocky and opportunistic “ Songbird” is billed as the first Hollywood feature to be made during quarantine, and this impressively scaled pandemic-themed riff on “The Purge” couldn’t be prouder of itself for that accomplishment.
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