Black Mirror review: Playtest is a horror story for the internet age

October 24, 2016June 1, 2018 ~ alexmoreland

The script has plenty of quite intelligent moments and unexpected reversals. Arguably the most effective of these was the handling of Cooper’s father’s Alzheimer’s – having set the audience up to expect an apparition of the father, Charlie Brooker expertly subverts this by presenting a far subtler rendition of Cooper’s fears about his own mental state. It’s possibly one of the most intelligent scares of the episode, and by that token the most meaningful; certainly, it stands head and shoulders above the CGI jump scares that proliferate the rest of the episode.

Yet despite this, there’s something about Playtest that just feels… empty.

My review of Black Mirror Season 3′s second episode, Playtest. It’s an attempt at a more overt horror story than they normally go for, but sadly, it’s not one that connected with me.

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