Film Review: Black Mirror Episode Special: White Christmas

White Christmas is a Black Mirror Episode Special that was set around the conclusion of Series Two. And it's quite the watch.

This installment boasts several twists and turns, most notably the one big one near the end. And as is Black Mirror's wont, this revolves around technology being used, and of course, misused.

Warning

Spoilers! Many of the delicious plot twists are discussed and dissected here. If that isn't your thing, turn back now!

The Premise

A murder suspect is put in a virtual reality simulation to extract a confession. That's not exactly accurate, but it's the simplest way for me to explain it without writing an entire wall of text.

Basically, this story is told mainly in three parts, with each chapter a story of its own, tied back to the overarching narrative.

The Characters

John Hamm has a ball of a time playing Matthew Trent. From the sheer smugness and smarminess, along with the undeniable persuasive charm, he owns every scene he's in. I've only seen him in Baby Driver and Top Gun: Maverick, but man, this guy is good! It definitely doesn't hurt that he gets the choicest lines, even delivering cliches like "always move with purpose" with gleeful panache.

Rafe Spall plays Joe Potter, arguably the real victim of this whole mess. There's a hang-dog look about him that is perfect for this role. His eventual descent into despair and madness, while not entirely relatable, strikes a chord. Even though he's technically a murderer and at least partially responsible for one other death (of a child, no less), he actually winds up being the most sympathetic character in this story.

Rasmus Hardiker as Harry, the nerd who needs help in his pickup game. This ends up tragically, but in the meantime, he does a decent job portraying someone who isn't all that sure of himself and the horror of the guy's final moments.

Natalia Tena is Jennifer. She's a dark-haired aloof girl who's a bit of an ice-queen until she isn't... and reveals herself as mentally ill, with disastrous results for herself and Harry. I thought she looked familiar! She's the same actress playing Nymphadora Tonks from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and it's mildly amusing she plays opposite another character named Harry in this one.

Oona Chaplin is delightful as Greta's Cookie A.I. She delivers, in her limited on-screen time, the sheer horror of having your consciousness trapped perpetually in a system, with no escape, nothing to do but extremely pedestrian tasks. The fact that she's easy on the eyes has nothing to do with this!

Janet Montgomery as Joe's ex Bethany Grey. She turns out to be the asshole of this series, probably by design. She is a prime example of people using the Block feature to escape from their moral responsibilities. This whole mess might have been avoided if she had owned her shit like an adult instead of using the Block feature to run away. But I think Montgomery was pretty good in that role. She effectively conveyed affection and self-centeredness, weakness and moodiness in the short screen time she had. I found her performance credible.

Dan Li as the guy Beth cheats on Joe for, Tim. Kind of drab as far as personality goes, nothing really interesting here.

Zahra Ahmadi as Gita, Tim's girlfriend, who, in Joe's words, is "more into him than he is into her". Pretty bubbly, and that's really all the role calls for.

Ken Dury as Beth's dad, Gordon Grey. The portrayal is very "get off my lawn" and cranky.

The Mood

It starts off comfy, in a log cabin. Then it begins to go into the dim and chill vibe of a house party before descending into the macabre horror that Black Mirror is known for.

Soon, it's all shades of white as Matthew goes into other expositions and flashbacks, and eventually we get into another kind of white as Matthew leaves the police station and out into the snowy weather.

There are different moods and lightings used, but ultimately it's grim humor and sadness.

What I liked

Overall, the dialogue was superb. It just served as good exposition, with a lot of foreshadowing baked in. Wouldn't be out of place in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The Zed-eyes tech is nicely applied as "romantic services", as Matthew puts it. This is used for an expert to coach a user through the pickup game. With features like facial recognition and live camera syncing.

The group chat on Matthew's other screen. The usernames are hilarious and clever! Shout out to "I_AM_WALDO", though. Great callback to The Waldo Moment.

The sequence of Harry trying to confess that Matthew and the others are seeing what he sees and speaking into his ear to Jennifer, a schizophrenic, is ironic, darkly hilarious and horrifying all at the same time. Vintage Black Mirror!

The Block feature. Matthew explains that the Zed-eyes tech, built into their eyes, enables this. Anyone Blocked will visually and audibly blurred to the Blocker, and vice versa. It's creepy, yes... but at the same time I feel like apps like Clubhouse should work like this! Even still photographs will reflect this block, probably by way of image recognition. So cool! Only thing is, the block is lifted once the initiator dies, so that could serve as a very real motive for murder.

The entire sequence of Matthew's conversation with the Cookie, and explaining how this whole thing works. Jon Hamm is really in his element here as this supremely smarmy salesperson persona, and it serves to inform the viewer as well.

More callback goodness! Beth sings the song Abi sang back in Fifteen Million Merits.

The "paper" form that Joe signs at the police station actually acts like some kind of tablet, with the words appearing on "screen". That is a neat piece of tech - probably overkill, but still awesome.

This footage (cool TV, by the way) seems to be straight out from the talent show in Fifty Million Merits. Wow, another callback!

The plot twist of Beth's daughter's parentage. Phew, I totally did not see that coming.

This is not the first time I've seen someone being killed on-screen with a snow globe. I've seen it once in Unfaithful, but the sheer amount of blood had struck me as unrealistic. This one was better.

This is what it looks like when you're blocked by everyone...

...due to being a registered sex offender. There are horrifying implications to this - anyone could attack the identified sex offender just for being a sex offender, and assuming the victim survives the attack, he would not be able to identify the attacker due to the attacker appearing like a idistinct blur and sounding very muffled. Also, in this case Matthew's crime is relatively benign - that of voyeurism. But as far as this goes, there is no indication as to what degree the offence was, and people might assume the worst!

What I didn't

Dan Li's casting as the guy that Beth cheats on Joe for. What the fuck? Other than being Asian (and thus serving as a plot device), this character had absolutely nothing to contribute to the story. He's not even particularly hunky, and let's face it, if you have a distinct lack of characterization for a character, at least make it visually apparent why a woman would cheat on her boyfriend with him.

The scene where Joe's cookie is being sentence to a virtual several thousand years of listening to the same song in the cabin over and over, is decent. But the part about the music volume being cranked up every time he destroys the box, just doesn't make any kind of sense. Like, why would that even happen?

Conclusion

There was more good than bad about this episode special overall. Plenty of Black Mirror classic elements, humor and horror, all tech-related, complete with a really bleak ending. The way the story was constructed was genius! Really making my Christmas.

My Rating

9.5 / 10

Wishing you a very Black Christmas!
T___T