Review: Immortality – "a fantastic dose of escapism"

Immortality
(Netflix / Half Mermaid)

Interactive movies once excelled in accidental hilarity. Take the example of Night Trap, an atrocious bargain-bucket thriller for Sega CD from 1992 in which lads dressed in bin bags pretended to be vampires and chased sorority girls around cardboard sets. Night Trap was banned, not due to crimes against entertainment, but because its cartoon violence and sexy nonsense rattled pious early-1990s tastemakers.

No such accusations are levelled at Immortality, which is aimed squarely at an adult audience. Players, viewers, or perhaps (more fittingly) participators, shift through a collection of restored film clips in an effort to figure out what became of Marissa Marcel, a fictional film star who made three movies – none of which were released – before vanishing.

Work your way through a labyrinth of rehearsals, table reads and TV interviews from Marcel’s curtailed career. Pause, replay, fast forward or rewind, to search for clues about her fate. Click on a key character or stage prop which will propel you into a corresponding image from another clip. As you progress, Marcel’s behind-the-scenes life unfolds. In this novel form of storytelling, you become a cinematic sleuth. The actor performances are all excellent: in particular the lead, Manon Gage, who plays the mysterious Marcel. Soon to be released on Netflix, Immortality is a fantastic dose of escapism for fans of Charlie Brooker’s conundrum-crazed interactive thriller Bandersnatch.

8/10