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Director Steven Soderbergh's Mosaic opens with two men in a hotel hallway on your TV. But, if you'd like, it can begin with Sharon Stone on a ski lift on your phone.
Mosaic is a new HBO miniseries from the Ocean's Eleven director (Monday through Friday, 8 ET/PT, ★ ★ ½ out of four) about the murder of wealthy children's-book author Olivia Lake (Stone) in a small Utah community. But the story can also be experienced via the Mosaic app, which allows viewers to view the narrative from different points of view, in different pieces and with added content.
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As technology hurtles forward and Hollywood attempts to keep up, some directors have attempted to change up the traditional film and TV formula, including The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who brought a virtual-reality installation to the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Mosaic takes a "branching story," as Soderbergh calls it, and provides literal branches in the app, connecting short videos that a user can tap to play and form the story in whatever way they please.
The app doesn't exactly revolutionize the TV-watching experience, but it isn't a gimmick, either. It's more like a fun supplement that enhances the standard whodunit with new scenes and new perspectives. Viewers who choose to watch only on HBO or their phones will likely be satisfied with either experience.
Mosaic is a decent murder mystery. The twisting tale occasionally shifts its point of view but doesn't offer as many as the app does. It begins with Olivia Lake as she meets the two men who will become the primary suspects in her murder: Joel (Garrett Hedlund), an aspiring artist looking for mentorship from Olivia, who's more interested in an intimate relationship; and Eric (Frederick Weller), a con man whose romantic overtures are suspicious.
When Olivia disappears on New Year's Eve, and is presumed murdered, Eric is quickly imprisoned for the crime, but four years later, his sister Petra (Jennifer Ferrin) devotes herself to exonerating him. The cast is rounded out by Paul Reubens as Olivia's best friend and James Ransone as her neighbor and surrogate son.
The series starts a bit too slowly. Stone is always a treat, but the pace and plotting are more gripping after Olivia's murder. Petra's appearance gives the series a healthy jolt of energy a few episodes in and Ferrin (Hell on Wheels) is quite appealing in the role. Her one-woman crusade is the most fascinating and engaging part of the series, which suffers when she's offscreen.
When Mosaic jumps around between character perspectives it often seems a little disjointed. Some of the scenes are assembled haphazardly and the transitions can be jarring. But on the app, where the user makes a decision in between many scenes, this makes more sense. The downside of the app, however, is missing out on Soderbergh's moody direction on a larger screen.
Whether interactive storytelling apps are the future of TV, Mosaic is a diverting experiment that mostly succeeds, however you put its pieces together.