Board 8 > Rate the Black Mirror Episode: S3E2 - Playtest

(+) Yeah! (+)

Screen buzzes, cracks.

Did you call your mom lately?
The episode follows Cooper (Wyatt Russell), an American who playtests an upcoming augmented reality game in London while travelling. It is a horror game which accesses his brain and targets his fears. Hannah John-Kamen co-stars as a video game journalist Cooper meets. The episode was inspired by an idea Brooker had for an augmented reality Whac-A-Mole game which increased in speed until the subject went crazy. After considering Tokyo, the crew decided to shoot in London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtest_(Black_Mirror)

Guidelines:

• Rate the episode from 1 to 10
• Feel free to share your reasoning
• You can rate previous days

Previous ratings:
9.04 - S1E2 - Fifteen Million Merits
8.71 - Special - White Christmas
8.37 - S2E1 - Be Right Back
8.13 - S1E3 - The Entire History of You
6.89 - S3E1 - Nosedive
6.88 - S2E2 - White Bear
6.22 - S1E1 - The National Anthem
4.83 - S2E3 - The Waldo Moment

8.5

6/10.

This one exists. Loses points for having jumpscares and spiders.

8.5

6/10

The ending sucks, but until then I thought it was neat and spooky

don't think i remember a single thing about it. but not in a "i should abstain" way, in a "it wasn't memorable for a reason" way

5/10

9

6.5/10

7.5/10

7.5/10.

Effective haunted house with a twist story, but should have had one layer fewer at the end there.

8

2/10

i'll change to 6/10 actually. 5/10 is too harsh. fairly sure i still liked it, like, it wasn't boring or anything.

5\10

Finally I'm all caught up

Nosedive: 7/10

I was surprised how very little I remembered this episode despite it heavily featuring Bryce Dallas Howard in a very distinct role among other things. It took me a good half hour into the episode, which is a little under halfway through the duration, for all the memories to come flooding back in. The social commentary is a bit heavy-handed, but I didn't take it 100% at face value, and rather saw it as a more sardonic view at where civilization could be headed if we stayed on our current track. This one lacks substance and cohesion, but it certainly has some very comedic moments, a good moral, and a cathartic ending.

Playtest: 6.5/10

The main character here, Kipper (Was that his name, and if so who did him that dirty?) feels like such a British stereotype of what an American tourist would be like it's almost impossible to watch him without cringing. His mannerisms, stutter (is it a nervous stutter or does he intentionally repeat himself on occasion for added emphasis?), and his frat boy laugh make it really hard for me to invest in him as a character which takes away the emotional impact at the end because I get the feeling I was supposed to care that he lied about which parent was suffering from Alzheimers and dementia, and I just... really didn't get the emotional gut punch I was supposed to. I did appreciate the mind fuck of the multi-layered mushroom tech and the more subtle existential horror elements that were hidden amongst jumpscare schlock.

I dont think thats supposed to be the implication about his parents. I think the implication is that his mother is also suffering from dementia and he left because he couldnt deal with that.

5

LightningStrikes posted...

I dont think thats supposed to be the implication about his parents. I think the implication is that his mother is also suffering from dementia and he left because he couldnt deal with that.

Ah. Well the point still stands in that I just wasn't invested emotionally enough to give a god damn.

This episode was a 10 for me. Loved the ending.

7, really cool concept but not my favorite execution.

7/10

It's essentially an ode to Resident Evil and survival horror games so that's cool in my book. I remember being really thrown for a loop at its ending but on rewatch it didn't really hold up so well.

6/10

I really enjoyed this one! 8/10