What do horror movie Choose or Die?, episodic crime thriller Kaleidoscope, and standalone mind-melter Black Mirror: Bandersnatch have in common besides the fact they’re all widely-panned Netflix originals?
That’s right; each of the notable duds was an interactive special that saw the streaming service try and apply the choose-your-own-adventure model to narrative filmmaking, and to say the results were somewhere between underwhelming and borderline sleep-inducing would be an apt summation.
And yet, the platform is back at it again after dropping the first trailer for Choose Love, an interactive rom-com that’s lets users oversee the romantic entanglements of its main characters, ultimately allowing them to decide who ends up with who by the time the credits roll.
Sure, it’s a cute gimmick that’s no doubt going to work from a viewership perspective given the novelty of handing rom-com lovers the chance to play god and manipulate the people onscreen like a maniacal puppeteer looming large over the very essence of fate itself, but the chances of Choose Love being a good movie are very slim based on nothing but what we’ve seen so far.
Of course, there’s always the chance we could be proven dead wrong and it ends up as one of the streamer’s most acclaimed in-house exclusives ever, but it’s also worth going out on a limb to confidently proclaim that won’t be the case, either. Much like the film promises to be, then, Choose Love‘s unique hook will be frothy, frivolous, and entirely forgotten mere weeks after it premieres.