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Katie comes back. Cooper signs the paper. The game starts. Katie puts on a mushroom on the back of Cooper’s neck. She tells him it‘s not permanent. Katie starts the system, and it appears something is being uploaded into Cooper. Cooper‘s mom suddenly calls in the middle of the upload. Katie gets the phone and turns it off. She says she thought she turned it off. Katie tells Cooper to look at the targets. The targets become holes, và a pixelated gopher appears. Katie checks if Cooper can see it, so he confirms. Katie upgrades the pixelated gopher into 3D. Then, into an almost real gopher. Cooper gets amazed. Katie tells him the gopher is just a mental projection, và she can‘t see it but Cooper can. Katie invites Cooper khổng lồ give the gopher a whack like “Whac-A-Mole.” Katie tells Cooper it‘s still a limited thử nghiệm game, & she thinks Cooper should demo the whole experience. He agrees.

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Katie takes Cooper to Shou Saito‘s office. Shou shares with Cooper some thoughts about why he likes to make people jump in games. He tells Cooper what they are working on: the most personal survival horror game in history. It works by scaring people using their own minds. Katie uploads the neural net package to Cooper. After putting the device off, Katie asks him how he is feeling. Cooper says he feels normal. Shou asks him if he is ready to lớn play.

Katie takes him lớn what Cooper thinks is the Harlech Shadow house. Katie tells him it‘s part of the estate. The house is actually the gamekeepers‘ lodge. Cooper asks Katie what he needs to lớn do. Katie tells him he doesn’t have to vị anything aside from staying in the house and seeing how long he can stay until he gets too scared. Katie gives him an earpiece so they can contact each other anytime. Katie asks Cooper for a safe word, something that will signal them that he‘s getting too scared. Cooper tells her the word “stop.”

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Someone bangs on the door. He gets nervous but tries khổng lồ fight it. When he opens the door, he sees Sonja. She tells him he‘s in danger. Cooper gets amazed again. He thinks she‘s not real, but when she touches her, she‘s solid. He checks everything about Sonja, but he still can’t believe she is there. He tries to lớn make sense of how she‘s real. Sonja tells him they need to get out of there & explains that Saito‘s project got rejected outright. Cooper does not believe her. He thinks Sonja is their accomplice. Sonja gets a knife and stabs Cooper. He tries khổng lồ get away from her, but she is stronger than him. While they are in a scuffle, the Sonja in front of him changes appearance. The Sonja she saw is not real.

Cooper starts khổng lồ hear Katie again. He explains everything that happened to lớn Katie frustratingly scared. Katie tells him nothing he ever sees can harm him or cảm ứng him. But Cooper stands by what happened. He knows he felt it. She further explains that it might be the neural connections replicating physical experiences. Cooper tells Katie that he wants them lớn stop the game. Katie says she will stop the game. Cooper tries lớn forcefully remove the mushroom, but Katie stops him và says it can kill him if he forces to lớn remove it. Katie tells him to lớn follow her instructions lớn get khổng lồ the access point. Cooper reaches the door khổng lồ the access point. Cooper hesitates to enter và tells Katie the scenarios that could happen behind the door. Katie tells him to mở cửa the door.

When Cooper enters the room, he asks where the access point is. Katie laughs & tells him there is really no access point. Katie tells him that she told him lớn go up in the room to lớn know if they have broken him enough to lớn obey their instructions without question. Katie asks him about his mother, but he can‘t answer properly. She follows up with another question until Cooper gets frustrated because he can‘t remember anything. He says it‘s taking his memories.

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Our Thoughts

This is one of the creepiest & scariest episodes of đen Mirror. All he wanted to bởi vì was play a game that can help him earn some money to lớn buy a ticket khổng lồ go home and talk to his mother. But everything turned out worse leading khổng lồ his death. The point of công nghệ is to make people‘s work easier. Và it‘s really promising that people can think of different ways of improving it. Yet, not everything with technology is positive. All things have pros & cons. Và we have lớn be sensitive lớn these two sides of advancement. Otherwise, what happened to lớn Cooper might really happen in real life. Bởi you really want công nghệ to take over your life?

The second episode of the third season of black Mirror is a particularly chilling look at the future of gaming, drenched in horror tropes. Kiểm tra out my review.

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“Playtest” starts in a rather dark place, before taking a rather pleasant turn. Cooper (Wyatt Russell) leaves trang chủ early one morning, and ignores a phone call from his mother. He has been looking after his dying father with Alzheimer’s, and decides khổng lồ travel the world khổng lồ recover from the ordeal when this father passes. He ends up in London, his last stop before returning home and reconnecting with his mother, whose phone calls he has continually ignored. As he is about to lớn fly home, he is a victim of credit card fraud, and ends up having to lớn stay with Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen) a woman he met in London, & work oddjobs, through an app, to lớn earn money for his flight home.

One of the posting on the tiện ích is for Saito
Gemu, a gaming company looking for volunteers to chạy thử a new immersive gaming system. Cooper jumps at the chance at what looks like easy money – và the thought that even a picture of the secretive game would be worth a lot. He is met at the secluded building by Katie (Wunmi Mosaku), who gets him khổng lồ sign some forms – giving Cooper just enough time to lớn retrieve his confiscated phone & send a picture khổng lồ Sonja – and injects the system into back of Cooper’s head. Katie then starts the playtest – a dễ thương mole appears infront of Cooper, and he plays a trò chơi of Whack-a-Mole, although everything he sees is only in his head, there is no physical mole lớn whack!

This ends the playtest, but luckily for us Cooper enjoys it so much, he agrees khổng lồ take part in a second even more immersive one. After meeting the reclusive developer Shou (Ken Yamamur), it is explained that the new trò chơi system will scan his thoughts và fears, và he will have to survive the night in a mansion with his thoughts. His only liên hệ will be with Katie through an ear piece. Again, everything he sees will be created virtually as part of the trò chơi – there will be nothing else physically in the house with Cooper. Or will there? As the night goes on, Cooper comes lớn question what he really fears, both in the game và in his life, as – predictably – things get darker & darker.

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Wyatt Russell as Cooper in “Playtest”

The second of this batch of Black Mirror episodes is written by series creater Charlie Booker, & delves into his love of clip games. It is also his most outright horror focused đầu ra since the Big Brother zombie mash-up Dead Set. And, in the same way “Nosedive” brought in a big name director in Joe Wright, “Playtest” is helmed by 10 Cloverfield Lane and Portal: No Escape director Dan Trachtenberg. Those two pieces of work show that he is perfectly suited to lớn the Black Mirror universe, & this episode in particular.

As mentioned in my reviews of the first episode “Nosedive”, I’m a huge tín đồ of the way Black Mirror can create engrossing worlds. The social truyền thông media takeover in the opening episode was a great example of that, but “Playtest” does it in a more traditional way. This time there’s no technological advance causing huge social change, instead we have a rather familiar story of a young man travelling the world after the death of his father. Black Mirror’s specific brand of techno-paranoia soon tightens the scope khổng lồ an isolated farmhouse, và then a single room, but the world of “Playtest” feels so close lớn our own – probably because it is.

The set-up is probably the most enjoyable time of all of the Black Mirror episodes so far, and as a long time tín đồ of The Twilight Zone, I didn’t mind the ending. No spoilers here but I know a lot of people felt it cheapened what had come before. For me though, the middle section of the story was actually a bit disappointing. The idea of the kích hoạt all being in Cooper’s head was stated early on, & that takes some of the weight out of the scares & jumps that follow.

Similarly, if you – the viewer – know you are watching something that is meant to scare you, it tends not to. Even when the nature of jump scares is directly referenced, you still need a bit more. There’s also one moment that is similar lớn a (much lower budgeted) Rimmer-monster in a recent Red Dwarf episode, which was an unfortunate piece of timing for me. However, in the same way that season 2 episode “White Bear” felt a bit hollow for a good part of its running time, that is, I suppose, the point of the episode.

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Wyatt Russell (left) in “Playtest”

Still, even if I was slightly underwhelmed by the middle chunk và the more overt horror of the episode, I still found it very enjoyable. Wyatt Russell does a good job with what could be a tricky role. The early, free-spirited, travelling Cooper could become annoying, và he walks the right side of the line with it. When the playtest begins, again his role narrating everything he sees could become clunky, but he gives it just enough charm to lớn make it work.

Maybe because of my love for The Twilight Zone, I really liked the ending, và in turn I really, really like this episode. It’s a great addition lớn the show. I’ve got to go now, I really should call my parents.

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All 4 seasons of black Mirror are available on Netflix, and the first two are on All4.