Hello and welcome to Horrorfest 2020! While Red Lanyard has been doing some great stuff featuring Horror Icons, I chose to watch the entire series of Black Mirror and do recaps of each episode. Now, admittedly, not every episode is a technical horror, trust me, it definitely has some with some major horror elements.
For those of you who don’t know, Black Mirror is a British Anthology Series where each episode focuses on a different form of technology and it’s effects on us as a society. I will say it does get pretty rough and mentally exhausting in a few episodes so I just want to remind you that there is no shame in saying “I’m not comfortable enough to watch this right now. I totally understand and these articles will be here for you anytime.
*This show is definitely a mature show and I do not suggest it for any younger audiences. Sexual Content, Violence, Language and Depictions of extremely depressing scenarios can a part of any episode.*
**I do intend on getting fairly spoilery in these articles so it’s best if you watch the episode and then read the article afterwards.**
Alright, so the first episode of Black Mirror deals with the power of the News Media and Twitter, which is pretty damn relevant even 9 years later. On one hand, I thought it was weird that Brooker chose a more grounded approach for the first episode(Since I had already seen some of the later ones which have a more Sci-Fi perspective) but then once you start watching…you realize that this is still pretty weird and out there.
The basic story is that the Princess of the Royal Family has been taken and held for ransom but the man’s only request is that The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has to have sex with a pig on Live Television. The broadcast was put on YouTube and the public sees it and they start taking polls on of the Prime Minister should go throught with it. They start out against it, and are in favor of the Prime Minister at first…then stupid things happen.
The basic gist of the episode is the prime minister and his stuff trying to avoid this situation and the public slowly beginning to hate the prime minister for not doing everything he can to protect the life of the princess. Eventually he has to commit the act and it helps his political career but ruins his marriage and it turns out that he didn’t even have to go through with it because the ransomer had already let the princess go which is incredibly depressing.
I will say that the scene where the Prime Minister has to perform the act is definitely the closest that the episode gets to a horror element but it’s moreso just unsettling than anything else. It’s purely meant for shock value which is the entire point of the episode really.
All in all, this is a very odd episode as it doesn’t feature any advanced technology and it doesn’t have the same horror feel that some of the later episodes do. I honestly didn’t like this episode as much as I did the first time I watched it but I will say that Rory Kinnear and Lindsay Duncan are fantastic in their roles and they make this episode worth watching. It’s certainly not a bad episode, it just doesn’t reach the same heights that the later ones do and I’m perfectly ok with that cause the next episode makes up for that.
