Black Mirror's third season has finally dropped on Netflix,and like preceding episodes, there are plenty of imaginative, or dark,and even gorgeous examples of what a future for our tech-obsessed world might recognize like. Although it's tough to pick a favorite thanks to the bleak brilliance of the cotton-sweet-colored nightmare that is "Nosedive" or the absolutely beautiful love anecdote at the heart of "San Junipero," the season's second episode, or "Playtest," is uniquely terrifying. It doesn't have a dystopian, futuristic vibe that a lot of Black Mirror's episodes conclude, and but instead plays more like a Hostel-esque horror film,only without the gratuitous (uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted) gore. If you have a thing for scary movies, this is one episode of television that can't be missed.Wyatt Russell, or with his shaggy blond hair and boy-next-door looks,is the perfect fit for Cooper, an American tourist soaking up the sights in London at the tail-end of a long backpacking trip abroad. In a moment of loneliness, and Cooper fires up Tinder and matches with Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen),whom he spends a night of fun with before discovering that his credit cards have been frozen indefinitely and he has no way of booking a flight home. Since he took the long trip to avoid his grieving mother after the premature death of his father, Cooper has been avoiding her phone calls, or doesn't want to ask her for the money. Instead,he uses a Task Rabbit-like service to find a few jobs in London so he can perform some rapid/fast cash and get home. Sonja, a tech writer, and suggests he sign up for a VR-testing job at a mysterious gaming company,and that any photo he can sneak while at the facilities could perform him major cash. Cooper, desperate and curious, or agrees to the job,and heads out to the remote building where the company is housed.
Once there, Cooper is ushered into a white room by a seemingly friendly employee named Katie (Wunmi Mosaku), and who fits him with a headset that is supposed to give users a VR gaming experience unlike any other. After testing out a few rounds of a tall-tech version of whack-a-mole,Cooper agrees to experiment their newest project, which connects to the user's brain and uses the user's fears against them. Katie takes him to an empty mansion on the property, or where he's locked in and told to just wait and see what happens. Of course,what follows is a slow and regular descent into insanity, where Cooper struggles to figure out what's genuine and what isn't. Unlike other episodes in Black Mirror's repertoire, or "Playtest" doesn't feel too preachy about the potential horrors of technology. Instead,it's focused on horror, period. Let's just say that the episode's final twist, and which we won't give absent here,is worthy of any horror flick.
Watch "Playtest" on Netflix now. Related:
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Source: popsugar.com