The Trailer for Pandemic Thriller Songbird Is Hollywood at Its Most Tone Deaf

What’s the last thing movie fans around the world are clamouring for right now? If you said a thriller about a never-ending pandemic – especially one about a mutated COVID strain called COVID-23 – you’d be absolutely right on the money. Yet Hollywood has once again proven its capability for making tone deaf decisions with the new trailer for Songbird, a pandemic thriller set in a world where lockdown has been going on for four years. It will come as no surprise to learn that it’s produced by Michael Bay.

The narrative takes place in a COVID-devastated world and looks to involve Nico (KJ Apa), who's immune to the virus, and his girlfriend Sara (Sofia Carson), who can't be with him in person due to the lockdown restrictions. After the COVID-23 virus mutates and begins to turn the population into bloody-thirsty zombies (honestly, this is what happens), the pair struggle to reunite against a backdrop of increasing violence – a situation made worse when Sara is believed to be infected.

Maybe the idea for this movie seemed like a better idea when the pandemic seemed like a less permanent state of affairs. Or maybe the creators were just hoping that curiosity would get the better of most people, given the timeliness of the premise. But that still doesn’t explain why so many famous faces agreed to be in this. Demi Moore, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare, Paul Walter Hauser, Alexandra Daddario. It almost feels like this could wind up as the Movie 43 of disaster films, the cast forced to spend the rest of their lives justifying why they signed up to such an ill-judged project (money, lack of work, boredom, sheer stupidity). But perhaps the biggest crime being committed here is the irritating, “eerie” sample of Bobby McFerrin's “Don't Worry Be Happy” that is dragged out over the course of the trailer's three minute runtime.

Songbird is set for release in 2021.