Movies have always been a medium for consuming predetermined stories. Following a single narrative flow designed by the director, audiences laugh, cry, and reflect. However, this long-standing premise has recently begun to shift with the emergence of content that allows the audience to directly choose the direction of the story.
What if the audience could choose the story themselves? Interactive Cinema begins with this very question. In this format, the story is viewed not as a single line, but as a series of multiple strands, and the choice of which path to take rests with the audience, not the director. At this point, the audience transforms from a passive observer into an active participant who intervenes in the narrative, intersecting with the core mechanics of gaming: choice and consequence.
While Interactive Cinema offers a degree of short-term novelty during the first encounter, it faces the drawback of lacking the narrative depth required to encourage repeat viewings. Due to this limitation, it has largely remained on the fringes, mostly within the realm of experimental media art.
A representative example of this format is Netflix's Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018). In this work, viewers reach different endings by choosing the protagonist’s actions at every crossroads. This piece is particularly noteworthy for how it aligns its form with its theme. Within a narrative that explores the nature of “free will,” the very experience of being forced to make choices becomes the message itself.
However, the advancement of generative AI and video technology is prompting a re-evaluation of these limits. In traditional Interactive Cinema, production costs increased exponentially with each added choice because every possible branch had to be filmed in advance. If AI can generate narratives and visuals in real time based on audience choices, infinite branching narratives will become technically feasible. Whether Interactive Cinema can truly establish itself as a new genre will depend on how far video production technology can go in guaranteeing the quality of the resulting narrative.
Choo Se-Yeon
[Department of Media & Entertainment, Sogang University]
