black-mirror negotiated a big shift for its sixth season, which has been online for a week on Netflix. The five new episodes, not at all bad, are no longer just about the perils of technology and the fear of a dystopian future dominated by human clones and hyper-sophisticated electronic gadgets.
black-mirror explores elsewhere, either in the classic horror film, without any screen, the black mirror of the title of this anthology series, appears in the plot.
Is it a good idea ? Yes and no. Yes, because the fifth and final episode, titled Demon 79provides as much chills, black humor and hemoglobin as a feature film by Ari Aster or James Wan.
And not because the best episode of the 2023 vintage remains the one that most resembles black-mirror traditional, or the third (entitled My heart for life), which features Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett in the costume of two astronauts from the late 1960s.
Before continuing, two crucial things. First of all, Black Mirror 6 outmoded BlackMirror 5 (the one, undrinkable, with Miley Cyrus, among others) in terms of quality and originality, but not the three previous chapters, which remain the most accomplished and the most terrifying.
Also, for the uninitiated, black-mirror is devoured in separate parts, in no precise order and without needing to have devoured the previous seasons to understand everything. They are one-hour independent mini-films, which have no connection between them except exploiting science fiction.
Everyone follows? Great. Let’s go back to our astronauts of the third episode, the most successful, which takes place in 1969. The two protagonists live in a spaceship and the very advanced technology allows them to teleport to their families, on Earth, as often as they wish. How ? By uploading their consciousness into a robotic replica of their body.
PHOTO NICK WALL, PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
Josh Hartnett in the third episode of black-mirror
It may sound weird, but this almost poetic, but very hard episode explores male violence and the deception of artificial intelligence in an atmosphere that sways between melancholy and drama. Of black-mirror at its best, with an extremely vicious ending. Kate Mara, Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett offer intense and nuanced performances.
The worst now is the fourth episode called Mazey Day and which wants to be a criticism of the amoral universe of the paparazzi. The action takes place in 2006, a pivotal period for Ed Hardy sweaters, “slide” telephones and the mini iPod Shuffle. A starlet, tormented by a troubled event from her not-so-distant past, lives a reclusive life in Hollywood, and the bidding for a photo of her, preferably intoxicated, skyrockets.
TMZ-like reporters find the young actress in a posh rehab clinic and the hunt for the coveted shot turns into a nightmare worthy of a well-known 1980s horror movie. The ending is as predictable as it is laughable.
The idea behind the first episode, called Joan is awful, could have been exploited so much better, because it is nicely meta. We follow Joan (Annie Murphy of Schitt’s Creek), a jaded young woman in charge of human resources for a funky techno company.
One evening, while scouring the Streamberry platform, looking for a series to gobble up, Joan comes across the new soap Joan is awful. Well. The main character of the series, played by Salma Hayek, sports the same haircut as her.
The house shown in Joan is awful is identical to that of the real Joan, her office too, her boyfriend too. In short, Streamberry (a thinly veiled copy of Netflix) vampirized and then manufactured Joan’s life into a mass consumer product.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
Salma Hayek, in the first episode of the sixth season of black-mirror
In each of the episodes relayed by Streamberry, the real Joan sees the fake Joan (hence, Salma Hayek) living her life in near real time and exposing all her secrets to millions of subscribers. How is it possible ? Thanks to the hyperfaking, in particular.
Trying to pull the plug on the show, the real Joan eventually meets Salma Hayek, who plays the fake Joan, don’t lose the thread, and the episode descends into slapstick, alas.
In Loch Henrythe second episode in a more conventional form, a young couple of filmmakers arrive in a Scottish village to shoot a series of true crime about a crank who tortured and massacred eight people in 1997. The documentary filmmakers’ research plummets into a very murky hole, without revealing anything.
I loved Demon 79, the fifth episode, set in 1979, about a shoe saleswoman in a department store in the north of England. This tidy and gentle young woman discovers a talisman, which releases a demon with atrocious demands. If the Indian-born shoe seller doesn’t kill three people in the next three days, the end of the world – no less – will occur.
The tone of the episode swings between bloody slasher, political drama (the country lives with racial tensions) and even psychological thriller. The shoe saleswoman discovers unsuspected talents and even develops sympathy for the devil, present for long, long years and stealing the souls of more than a million men, wou-hou!