The Corner Penthouse

Over the past year, there have been a handful of movies and television shows that have capitalized on the COVID-19 pandemic. Just off the top of my head, I can recall Connecting... on NBC, Love in the Time of Corona on Freeform, and Social Distance and Malcolm & Marie on Netflix. 2020 closed out with the VOD premiere of Songbird, which was, likely, the first feature film to be produced during the pandemic. Read on to find out more about it...


Songbird (2020) is set in a world in which a devastating pandemic ravages the Earth, placing the citizens of the United States in a perpetual lockdown. Infected Americans are ripped from their homes and forced into quarantine camps known as Q-Zones, from which there is no escape, as a few brave souls fight back against the forces of oppression. Amid this dystopian landscape, a fearless courier, Nico (KJ Apa), who's immune to the deadly pathogen, finds hope and love with Sara (Sofia Carson), though her lockdown prohibits them from physical contact. When Sara is believed to have become infected, Nico races desperately across the barren streets of Los Angeles in search of the only thing that can save her from imprisonment... or worse.


The movie posits a love story against a future pandemic. This story gets the majority of the screen time, and that story arc is the one that's more fleshed out, but it's still pretty basic with the sense that I've seen it before with different trappings. There are other characters, almost all of whom are connected in some way to each other, which seems rather contrived to me. Sure, courier Nico is the definitive connection between all of them, but even if he were out of the picture, every one - except for Sara and her grandmother - are in some kind of relationship with each other. While the three or four different storylines kept my interest, I can't say that they were very thrilling.


It doesn't help that the movie is confused about when it takes place and fails to provide the details needed to present a credible world. The virus in the movie is COVID-23, and the writers are presenting that as a mutated version of COVID-19. Only, that makes zero sense. For starters, the virus behind the real-world pandemic is SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19, which is the disease that it causes, is the abbreviated name for "Coronavirus Disease 2019". "CO" stands for "corona", "VI" for "virus", "D" for disease, and the "19" is due to the outbreak occurring in 2019. So, if that's what "COVID-19" stands for, than the movie's "COVID-23" should be a disease that was first released in 2023. Various news reports heard in the film state that the outbreak happened "three years ago", which means that the movie should be taking place in 2026. However, Sara's cell phone shows the date as March 20, 2024.


Also, the script doesn't bother to explain how everyone, especially the poor, get their basic supplies. It doesn't seem like the poor can hire couriers, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of couriers around, so how is everyone getting food, toilet paper, etc.? How are supplies, like food and toiler paper, still being produced/manufactured? No one, but the immune, can leave their houses, and the entire "outside world" (all of the stores, businesses, factories) seem to have been completely abandoned - since everyone is either sheltered, quarantined, or dead - so how is everyone able to survive "three years later"? The world should be functioning a little more like The Walking Dead. Yeah, I know. I'm putting way more thought into this than writers Adam Mason and Simon Boyes did. It's clear that this movie was hastily produced in an effort to either be "first" or to be released while the pandemic was still relevant.


If anything, the bigger story here is how the world got to be what it is. Unfortunately, Songbird isn't interested in telling that story. It plants us in this world with the virus already having taken place and with various institutions already in place. It would have been more compelling to see the violent rebellion that would, surely, have followed in a world where constitutional, never mind human, rights were (and still are) so wantonly trampled. All citizens undergo a daily virus test through their cell phone - the movie doesn't bother to explain how that's possible - and if you're found to be sick, the "Department of Sanitation" promptly arrives to dump you off at a "Q-Zone" quarantine camp. We never get one single look inside these camps, aside from a couple of overhead shots. There's a great story that could have been told from inside one of them, but that's not here. What's also not here is anything truly scary or fear-inducing. That's why I could not include the phrase "terrifying thriller" from the slightly-rewritten official synopsis I included in my second paragraph. Neither of those words apply to this movie.


In our real-life world, scientists work to develop vaccines, antidotes, and stuff of that nature to fight viruses and diseases. There is no sense that any of that takes place in the world of Songbird. Sick people are taken to Q-Zones, where they presumably die. If this world were realistic, the immune would be experimented on in an effort to use their genes to create a vaccine for COVID-23. None of that happens in Songbird. Also, I should ask, "Why is the movie named Songbird? That word never appears once in the movie. It would have been better titled Immune, or COVID-23, or Love in the Time of Corona...oh, wait, that name was already taken.


That's not to say that the movie is all bad. While it wasn't thrilling in the least, it kept my interest for its short runtime, although I kept waiting for it to get better. The best thing about the movie is the incredible cast of actors. Yeah, I really couldn't care less about KJ Apa, though teen girls would enjoy looking at him, but do I like Sofia Carson, and not just because she's nice to look at. It's always nice to see more of Alexandra Daddario, and not just in her very weird sex scene. Peter Stormare, one of my favorite actors, gets a chance to chew some scenery as the main bad guy. Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, and Demi Moore all give some great performances, too.


It was also a joy to get a tour from Nico of Los Angeles, California. I was amused to see that the exterior (and interior) of Lester's Gets (the business run by Craig Robinson's character)...


...is the same building at 516 South Anderson Street that was used as The Temple in seasons 1-3 of Lucha Underground (2014-2018). (Unofficial season 3 full episode uploads here.)


The Songbird crew also filmed inside the building, as best seen in the deleted scene "Crack with Your Cocopops".


Notice the railing on the upper balcony is the same as seen in this photo during the Lucha Underground filming. The above deleted scene was filmed in the area seen in the upper left of the photo below.


Songbird is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 1:25:23. On the audio side, there is only English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English Descriptive audio tracks. Subtitles are available in SDH and Spanish.


Here's a list of all of the bonus features that can be found on the Blu-ray disc. The bonus features play automatically after the film.

• Audio Commentary - with director/co-writer Adam Mason and co-writer Simon Boyes.
• Deleted Scenes (44:59) - A total of 18 scenes (with some graffiti and text blurred in them) with optional audio commentary by director/co-writer Adam Mason: "The Old Life", "Sandwiches", "Nails #1", "Westside Bestside", "What's the Matter, Alice?", "May Sings the Blues", "Nails #2", "You Ain't Clean!", "Nails #3", "William Sucks", "Narcoleptic Nico", "Crack with Your Cocopops", "Peeping Tom?", "Call Harland", "Grandma's Cookies", "Giffords", "You Let Her Tape You???" and "A House Up in the Hills".
• The Story of Songbird (43:59) - An in-depth look at the making of the film.
• Kingdom Promo Video (3:17) - Music video for the song "Kingdom" by Rosanna Brown.
• The Making of Kingdom (4:07) - The making of the music video.

An AppleTV digital copy code voucher is included in the standard one-disc Blu-ray case. The first print run includes a slipsleeve.


Songbird is available on Blu-ray and DVD, but I would recommend Renting It to see if you like it before considering buying either disc.


All images were taken from the IMDB gallery of the film. This item has been provided by Universal for review on this site.