Salma Hayek in a scene from ‘Black Mirror’ Season 6 | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
black Mirror, The anthology series that has been enthralling audiences since 2011, returns for its sixth season to get into that happy party game again. Which episode is your favorite of the five? Is it the meta ‘Joan Is Awful’, the true crime ‘Loch Henry’, the macabre and tragic ‘Beyond the Sea’, the morality tale ‘Mazy Day’ or the dark comic ‘Demon 79’? I will answer all of them even if someone puts a gun to my head (which is a black Mirror scenario), I would pick ‘Beyond the Sea’ with ‘Monster 79’ in second place.
Black Mirror (Season 6)
creator: charlie brooker
mould: Annie Murphy, Salma Hayek, Michael Cera, Himesh Patel, Samuel Blenkin, Daniel Portman, Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Zazie Beetz, Anjana Vasan, Papa Esidu
Story: From serial killers, werewolves, and grieving husbands to the worst kind of reality show and an erudite demon, this anthology has it all and then some.
Episode: 5
Running Time: 42 to 80 minutes
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Much has been made of ‘Joan is Awful’, which depicts Joan (Annie Murphy), an ordinary woman, middle management at a tech company, suddenly becoming a streaming service, Streamberry (the logo looks suspiciously like Netflix). But his life is playing out. real time. Salma Hayek plays Joan on the show, which is kind of flattering isn’t it? Within the show there is a hall-of-mirror effect with Cate Blanchett playing Hayek’s Joan and so it goes along with the “infinite content creator capable of bringing entire multiverses into existence” while the audience “is in a situation”. Let’s see. Enchanted horror.
There is a passing mention of Streamberry in ‘Loch Henry’. A young couple Pia (Maha’ala Harold) and Davis (Samuel Blenkin) come to Scotland to film a nature documentary on a man guarding birds’ eggs in Davis’ hometown. They live in the house where Davis grew up, where his mother, Janet (Monica Dolan), busy herself cooking elaborate meals for the couple. Davies and Pia are quickly distracted from their lofty ambitions when they hear about serial killer, Ian Adair (Tom Crowhurst), who starved tourists to death, turning the place into a ghost town. Davies’ friend, Stuart, (Daniel Portman) thinks a true crime documentary on Adair’s horrific crimes will bring the horrified tourists back.
When Stuart talks about a show about a guy who killed women, Pia’s “maybe tone it down” comment is telling. The story is effectively chilling at the horrors that lie beneath the hauntingly beautiful rural landscape.
‘Beyond the Sea’ is set in an alternate 1969 where two astronauts, Cliff (Aaron Paul) and David (Josh Hartnett) are on a six-year deep space mission. Back on Earth there are eerie lifelike mechanical copies of the two men who spend time with their wives and children. When disaster strikes, an invitation to kindness results in disastrous results.
Aaron Paul in a scene from ‘Black Mirror Season 6’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
‘Beyond the Sea’ is a tale of love, sorrow and anger that evokes the ancient tales of King David and Bathsheba, King Uther’s desire for Igraine, and one of the tales the berserker tells to King Vikram . Betal asks the question to the king that when a man’s head is swapped with another’s body, which is the true husband, the body or the head? ‘Beyond the Sea’ is a story that stays with you long after the credits roll as you wonder who was wrong and who was right and whether evil was at heart even before the cataclysmic event. This is indeed a shudder-inducing thought problem.
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‘Mazy Day’ tells the story of a paparazzi, Bo (Zazie Beetz), who stops stalking celebrities after one of his photographs leads to an actor’s suicide. However she is back in the game when agencies are offering sacks of money for a shot of actor Mazie Day (Clara Rugaard), who has been out of sight during a shoot in Czechoslovakia. Morality tale/straight-up horror story Old Faithful, with shoot-outs at the diner, awesome pecan pie served, blood, guts and loads of gore, ‘Mazy Day’ has a lot going for it.
‘Demon 79’ is set in 1979 when all kinds of unsettling noises are coming, set to the eerie soundtrack of the time. Starting and ending with Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Bright Eyes’, there’s also Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’ and ‘Ma Baker’. Incidentally, the German-Caribbean pop group has an important role in the story as the demon Gap (Papa Essiedu) takes on the appearance of Boney M singer Bobby Farrell when he learns that Musi Shoe salesgirl, Nida, (Anjana Vasan) seeks out Farrell. Is. Attractive.
Gapp is a thoughtful demon and tells Nida to do terrible things in the most appropriate way. If she doesn’t do terrible things, in addition to the world going down the toilet, Gap is doomed to “spend eternity in the vacuum of infinite nothingness”, “forever alone in an intensely clear and ever-present lack of existence”. To tolerate Nida says that the narrative of her life echoes a modern day in the lives of all of us.
The acting is excellent with Dolan, Hayek, Paul and Hartnett keeping us hooked to their stellar performances. So beautifully shot, with just enough visual cues to always keep us off-kilter, black Mirror This age of anxiety has a subtle and wild cover.
Black Mirror currently streams on Netflix