How many times have you watched a movie and found yourself screaming at the characters on the screen, trying your best to project your personal directives to the onscreen actors? Well chances are they don’t listen to you (I mean how else do you you turn a 20 minute event into a 2 hour film), but there’s one movie out there at least looking to change that for you. Michael R. Johnson, who worked on the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, wrote the new interactive film where you, the viewer, can make choices in particular parts of the film.
The movie was released as an iOS app and was shown in select theaters, allowing audiences to collectively vote on each decision via their smartphones. There are 180 decisions in total and seven possible endings, spanning four hours of footage shot in London.
‘Late Shift’ has its hero, its plot, its high points and turning points. It has one beginning – but countless possible storylines and seven different endings.
Matt, a smart student, has to prove his innocence after being forced into the robbery of a famous London auction house. How will the audience decide to act when everything is turning against him? The audience takes decisions for the interactive thriller’s hero while the movie keeps on running seamlessly.
This time it’s different. This time you leave the theatre knowing that if you watched the movie again, you could see a different story. What if you’re dissatisfied with the consequences of the audience’s collective decisions? Then, in the form of the app, the protagonist’s fate is in your hands alone. It is up to you to discover countless variations of the same plot and make “better” decisions.
The movie will be coming to current gen consoles next month, but is already available for iOS and Android.