Neflix’s Bandersnatch was very unique. It was a choose your own adventure movie where you make decisions for the protagonist, a programmer who is creating a video game based off a mad writer’s fantasy book. The choices start out simple, like picking what cereal he’s going to eat for breakfast. However, the decisions escalate. Eventually you can choose between having the programmer or his co-worker jump to their deaths or even murdering the programmer’s father.
The character starts to become aware that you’re controlling him, and the movie gets real meta. There are multiple endings you can get too.
While there are no other choose your own adventure movies (yet), there are movies that explore the same ideas as Bandersnatch that you may be interested in if Bandersnatch fascinated you. Here is our list.
Sliding Doors
This romantic-comedy-drama film comes from back in 1996. Like Bandersnatch, it explores how much a character’s life can change if they take two different paths. In this movie, you see two stories. Both are the same woman, Helen, except one is her life if she made it to her train and one is if she missed her train.
Sliding Doors is more lighthearted than Bandersnatch, but has the same split-timeline theory backing up it’s narrative.
Groundhog Day
Whenever there is a topic that involves reliving the same day over and over again, it’s typically this movie that comes into people’s minds. This 1993 comedy film has created a legacy of time-loop related stories. While there are other time-loop related fiction tales, it was this movie that really nailed the trope into pop culture.
Like Bandersnatch, fans and critics have written different interpretations of the meaning behind the film and the time-loop. Some would say that even if Bandersnatch was not your cup of tea, you should definitely see this movie. It’s a classic.
Mr. Nobody
Mr. Nobody is a science fiction drama that, like Bandersnatch, is odd, experimental, and explores the idea of branching timelines based on different choices the protagonist can make. The protagonist, Nemo, is the last mortal person on Earth after the human race as managed to make themselves semi-immortal. At 118 years old, we get to see Nemo reflect on the life he lived. The film looks back on his memories at various stages of his life, but does so while experimenting with different decisions he could have made while in those situations.
Frequency
Some may call this one of the ultimate dad films, but it’s also in the realm of science fiction. A firefighter and his son accidentally manage to talk to each other across time, 30 years apart to be exact. The son warns the father that he will die in an accident, so the dad manages to avoid that death. This creates alternate an timeline where the father dies of lung cancer and the son’s mother is murdered by a serial killer. So the father-son duo now try to stop the serial killer in their own timelines. As you can imagine, even more timelines are explored later.
Primer
If you claim to understand this movie completely, then you are a liar. This time-travel film is confusion central and is definitely worth watching more than once to get a better understanding of what is going on. Like Bandersnatch, it’s narrative and plot structure are experimental.
It’s worth seeing not just by Bandersnatch fans, but for regular movie fans as well. It achieved high ratings for it’s originality and has won a number of awards. The film was praised for how it explored the moral and ethical implications of time travel. It was a low-budget film too, which makes it’s success in with critics even sweeter.
Source Code
If you think this movie is just an action-thriller, than this movie’s marketing has tricked you like it has tricked so many others. While there is definitely thrilling action, this movie is also in the realm of science fiction.
It has been compared to another movie on this list, Groundhog Day, due to it’s exploration of experiencing a moment more than once. Except the plot of this movie is more high stakes, as the protagonist is trying to stop a bomber and save people’s lives.
Chaos Theory
As the title suggests, this film explores chaos theory. It explores what consequences do or do not happen in certain environments or when a person does different things. However, unlike most of these movies, Chaos Theory is not science fiction or even magical realism. Despite not being in those genres, the movie still successfully explores the butterfly effect. The protagonist, played by Ryan Reynolds, just decides to go through life by chance and randomness after he goes through a series of events beyond his control.
Monsoon Shootout
What sets Monsoon Shootout apart from others on this list is that it is actually a Bollywood movie. What places it on the list though is that the film explores different paths a single choice in one moment can make. That moment? The protagonist is a cop in a shootout with a gangster. Once he gangster is cornered, the cop has a variety of choices as to what to do. Each decisions is explored, showing how the decision ultimately influences who he will become and how it changes the lives of others as well. This is also a good movie for noir film fans, as the movie does have a noir-esque style.
Your Name
This anime romantic fantasy drama is more than just eye candy for it’s stunning visuals. The fantasy aspect is what draws it as a Bandersnatch-esque film. We do not want to give away the twist though, which it ultimately the reason it’s on this list. What we can tell you is that it stars a girl and boy switching bodies every once in a while. The boy lives in Tokyo and the girl lives in a rural town in the mountains. Eventually they want to meet each other, except their situation is even more paranormal than they first thought.
Looper
This science fiction action film is about time organized contract killers who go back in time to kill their victims and dispose of their bodies. The main character, Joe, is one of the body disposers. It pays well, but the price ends with their retired future selves eventually being killed to keep the organized crime a secret. When his future self comes to the past though, he turns out to not be dead and also on a mission. Old Joe wants to find and kill the big boss of the crime syndicate they work for. However, that means killing three children with the same birthday since he isn’t completely sure which one will grow up to become their boss. Young Joe seeks to stop his older self.
