Black mirror

Season 4

Year of release : 2017

Run time : 41min-1h15m

Genre : Anthology / Dystopia / Sci Fi

Black Mirror is a British anthology series inspired by The Twilight Zone series, first released on Channel 4 in 2011, created by Charlie Brooker.

After the 2014 "White Christmas" episode, the series moved to Netflix.

The episodes are always set in a future dystopia commenting on the use of technology and its impact on humanity.

Episode 1 - USS Callister

Robert Daly is the CTO of a tech-entertainment company who doesn't really know how to talk to people,being an introvert, and whom is not considered the boss of his company, although he is, with his friend.

Whenever he goes home, he logs on to the video game he created, based on his favorite tv show, Star Trek, as a child, as the commander of a starship. The people in his video game are the same he interacts with in the real world.

When newcomer Nanette comes to greet him at work (in the real world), being a big fan of his, Robert takes the DNA she left on a coffee cup, and copies her into his video game.

After a panic attack,when she wakes up on board of the ship, the people there tell her they are trapped by Robert there as punishment of how they treated him in the real world. And let her know he is an evil god who punishes them for things their original did in the real world, while they have to do his bidding (meaning play along), in the video game.

Nanette is just as good at creating code as Robert is, and she might be his undoing.

I personally enjoyed the episode, it keeps you on the edge of your seat.

The acting was good, Jimmi Simpson, who's one of my favorites since I saw him 20 years ago in "Stay alive", was acting off at the beginning (so was everybody else, like a Stepford wife, but I only knew Jimmi's acting), and I was like " there's no way this guy is bad at acting", to realize after, he was overacting as his character was supposed to pretend he was in awe of whatever Robert was doing, so he wouldn't taste his wrath.

The soundtrack was good.

The visual effects were great.

The episode won 4 Primetime Emmy Awards, being nominated for 7 Emmy Awards in total. The episode has a sequel in the 7th season of the series, titled "USS Callister : Into Infinity".

Episode 2 - Arkangel

Directed by Jodie Foster

A single mother is raising her little girl with the help of her father. Each day they pass by this dog who always barks at them. At the park, the little girl sees a cat, and runs after her.

The mother has a panic attack as the daughter disappears, and they have a search party. They find her, and she takes her to Arkangel , a company which specializes in tracking devices implanted in kids' heads.

With this device, she can see through her daughter's eyes, what she sees, also monitor her health status, and censor what she sees.

The mother decides her daughter doesn't need to see anything that would upset her, so she blocks her from seeing the barking dog, and anything else at school, like kids fighting or hurt. Due to this, she doesn't see when her grandfather has a stroke, because it's all blurred and muted.

Her mother becomes addicted to the ipad, watching what her daughter sees as if watching tv, all the time.

Due to this, and what her classmates tell her, she ends up hurting herself, because she sees the blood she paints is blurred.

Taking her to the doctor, they think she's autistic, when in fact, it's because of what she did to her!

In the begging, the mother was so annoying, always controlling her daughter, always poking in her head, watching what she's doing (that was effed up!), but then, when she turns off the device, the daughter becomes annoying, as she turns out to be a liar, and the mother starts using the monitor again, wanting to see what the daughter is doing, after she doesn't come home one night. It seemed the daughter was doing things (like using dr@gs) just to prove to the guy she liked she was cool, or something.

The actors did a good job.

The soundtrack was good.

Episode 3 - Crocodile

Cast : Andrea Riseborough

After a party, still a bit drunk, a couple get back home. While singing and talking, not paying attention to the road, the man hits someone with the car. Getting out of the car they notice it was someone riding a bicycle. The man doesn't want to go to jail, and convinces his girlfriend to help him dispose of the body and tell no one.

15 years later, she is married,has a 9 year old son, and is an architect. Her ex boyfriend comes to see her while she stays at a hotel after giving a lecture, and tells her he's sober now, and in the AA program, doing the 12 steps, one of them being, he needs to tell the truth to the ones he wronged. He wants to tell the wife of the bicycle rider what he did. Mia doesn't want to, as that would ruin her life, and she k1lls him.

She purchases an erotic movie on the hotel tv, so people would think she's in the hotel room, and puts his body in the serving table on wheels of the hotel, taking it to her car. She drops his body at a construction site.

A woman working for an insurance company investigates how the man who was hit by a truck broke his arm, and uses a device on people to see their memories of the incident. One of the people she sees have Mia in his memories, and leads her to her.

If Mia let's her in her head, she might see more than she should.

I personally enjoyed the episode, it deals with the anxiety and the mental state of this woman who needs to salvage the life she built after the mistake of youth comes back to haunt her ( of not calling the police, at the scene of the crime, ending up an accomplice to murder). In order to hide her tracks she goes further and further away from what she was and who she was.

 

Speaking of the device in the movie, I think that's an invasion of privacy, and is no one's business what's in someone's head. I didn't find it Ok she used it on people who had nothing to do with the accident.

Also, the insurance investigator gives the people beer to smell, and play them the song, but she does the same to Mia, who was in the hotel room, so she didn't hear the song played in the car on the other side of the street, and didn't smell the beer scent!

The episode was filmed in Iceland.

The acting was great, especially from Andrea Riseborough.

The soundtrack was good, Irma Thomas' 1964 song "Anyone who knows what love is (will understand)",a recurring song in the series, is played again(somebody must really love this song!) . They also played it in the 1st season, in the "15 million merits"episode.

Episode 4 - Hang the DJ

A couple meets for the first time at a restaurant, while they use a "system" app they use for the first time, telling them the exact amount of time they will spend together. It shows them 12 hours.

They eat, and are taken to a small house.They have a good time together, and when their time expires, they walk away.

Right after, they are paired with other people, him for a year, with a woman who hates him from the getgo, her for 9 months, with a man she seems to like in the beginning, but both of our leads seem to be interested in each other, always enjoying each other's company when they see each other.

She is paired with many men, over and over again, for 36 hours or so, until his relationship is over, then they are paired together again.

They decide to never look at the timer, as they want to stay together, and don't want to know.

I liked this episode once the reveal happened, it was about real love in a technological era. Until then, it just felt like a dystopia in which the "system", the great AI, is telling people who to date, even if they don't like the person, and how long to stay with them. They also spent their whole time in this place guarded by a towering wall, a house being given to them for the amount of time they stayed together, as if in a cult of sorts.

The idea was for them to enjoy each other's company so much, they never look at the timer, or feel the passing of time.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the episode contains many s3x scenes.

The acting was good.

The soundtrack was good.

The title of the episode is given by the song played towards the end, when they see each other at the bar.

Speaking of the ending, I didn't quite like that ending ,as I think it would have looked better if they were lying down in a bed. Because the way it ends, it gives us the idea it all happened in their head while they were at the bar, her standing! I think it would have looked even better if they woke up, maybe in their beds, and then were eager to meet, and ran to each other, hugging. The way it ended, they didn't look too eager to meet.

Episode 5 - Metalhead

The episode is the shortest of the season (41 minutes long), and was shot in black and white.

In what seems to be a post apocalyptic world, Bella, and two of her male friends try to get something (we're not told what it is) from a warehouse for someone who is dying.

As they find the box, a robot dog is "sleeping" behind it, and gets activated when sensing movement, releasing tracking devices which it shoots around (as if releasing spores), wounding Bella and one of her friends.

Trying to make a getaway, her friend is shot, and she takes the car, while her other friend is working on a van they found. Going separate ways, the dog goes after the friend in the van first, k1lling him.

After, it sets its sights on Bella.

Bella gets the tracking device out of her leg, putting it in a bottle of water, throwing it into a river.

Soon, the metal dog realizes it's not a human, and sets its sights on the movement it hears, tracking and finding Bella again.

This episode reminded me of Terminator, as the robot metalhead dog is relentless, and it doesn't stop until it k1lled its target. It's hard to destroy even when shot at, and even when destroyed, it releases the trackers again, for other dogs to track its prey!

Maybe that's what led to the collapse of civilization.

SPOILER At the end of the episode we realize what they tried to get was a teddy bear!

The acting was great. Maxine Peake who plays Bella (it's just her the whole episode running from the robot) was great!

The soundtrack was good.

The visual effects were good. They were used to show what the robot dog was seeing, how it was tracking the prey and scanning the area. Apparently the dog was also added in post production, so the actors had to react to things in their imagination, so they were really good!

 

The episode received positive reviews, the critics praising Maxine Peake's acting.

The episode was nominated for a few awards, and won the BAFTA Craft Award for Special Visual Effects and Graphics.

Episode 6 - Black Museum

This episode, which is more than an hour long, is divided in three parts, and holds 3 stories.

Nish stops at the gas station to find it closed,so she waits for her car to charge. While waiting (it shows charging will take more than 3 hours), she discovers the Black Museum, and goes in, although the owner, Rolo Haynes, tells her more people are supposed to show up.

He starts giving her the tour, and tells her the story of every item in the museum (we get to see many items from the previous episodes, including from previous seasons).

See, before opening this museum, Rolo used to get volunteers to test his technology. The first piece is a head piece which used to be used for medical purposes. He talks about a doctor who agreed to test technology which allowed him to feel what the patient felt, to be able to diagnose the patients better.

The doctor had to implant a chip which looked like a light bulb at the back of his head, while the head piece, looking like a shower cap was placed on the patient.

In the beginning, everything went well, the doctor saving lives, but then, when he waited too long to diagnose a patient who was poisoned, he experienced death, and came back being aroused by the patient's pain.

The second story is about a man who accepted to implant his wife's (who was in a coma for years) conscience into his head. I don't know why anyone would think this a great thing, as this means you have no privacy (when you go to the bathroom, are with the one you love..not to mention hearing another voice in your head all the time!)

As I suspected, he gets tired of her nagging, and complaining whenever he looked at another woman,or even talked to one, and he actually meets someone he wants to be with, but guess what, the voice, pardon, wife in his head doesn't agree with, as she's jealous. She also doesn't appreciate being put on pause, meaning him turning her off for months, as if she's still alive, and has the right to live in somebody else's head, telling them what to do - which was ,stay single, and don't look at other women.

So, Rolo suggests they can put her in a toy they can give to their son. Which they do, but the kid gets tired of it fast.

The third story is the story of Rolo who drank the water his customer gave him, as the AC didn't work and it was very hot inside.

See, he seems to like the bad things his technology did to people, the last story being about the man he turned into a hologram, after he got the chair. The man and his family insisted he wasn't guilty, but Rolo was interested in making money off him, as he turned him into his museum's center piece.

People came daily, to give him the shock treatment, so the man suffered daily for hours, the pain of the electr1c chair. Not to mention, he gave people a souvenir, of him suffering the shock treatment they gave him.

I didn't quite like this episode, I don't know what is it, movies like this, who have more stories, lose me. Apparently the audience of the movie felt the same.

I did like the ending, but again, the girl had her mother in her head, which again, raises the question, how does she live with her mother in her head? What is she gonna do when she goes on a date, finds a man she likes, and wants to be intimate with, and so on?Turns her off?

The acting was good.The actress who played Nish received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and a Black Reel Nomination.

The soundtrack was great.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the episode contains nudity.

The series received critical acclaim, the ratings scoring close to 100% , the first season being seen as the best!

The series received Primetime Emmy Awards nominations,winning some, and won the International Emmy Award for Best Tv Movie / Miniseries.

Rating : It's so money !