Island Living (& Dying)

A tense star-studded triangle on an isolated island involving paranoia about contagious disease? 

This is my love language.

Quick Plot: Kate and Martin are an unhappily married but excessively attractive couple taking a quiet break on the isolated Blackholme Island. They spent happier times there some years before and are hoping to recover from the recent tragedy of Kate's miscarriage.

Obviously, that goes swimmingly.

Kate is distant. She pounds away at an anonymous article on her laptop, keeping Martin at arm's length. He tries to make the best of it (mostly by frying messy eggs) but it's clear a weekend trip is no marriage counselor.

Even though the sweaters can do a LOT of work. 

Things are looking even dimmer after the cottage's generator fails and a mysterious soldier washes up on their shore. 

Armed and covered in blood, Jack awakens to deliver some bad news: there's a deadly outbreak on the mainland. Jack aggressively boards up the cottage while Martin and Kate try to figure out if they've found a savior or psychopath.

I love a story like Retreat. The plot synopsis immediately called to mind Right At Your Door, one of my favorite modern Twilight Zone spins. We know as much as Martin and Kate, so we're equally torn between Jack being the danger or being right the whole time. 

Director Carl Tibbetts (best known to me from the brutal White Bear installment of Black Mirror) seems fairly at home with his tension and setting. Retreat is both claustrophobic and wide open, which is how any isolated island thriller should be.

It's also, unfortunately, incredibly unpleasant. 

Retreat is a dour, dour film. Thandiwe Newton and Cillian Murphy are incredible performers, but they're playing characters who haven't cracked a smile in ten years. Their relationship is all tension even BEFORE Jamie Bell shows up with a gun.

For a bit during its middle stretch, Retreat is quite involving. Those of us who have seen these kinds of movies before have plenty of ideas about which way things might be going, but that doesn't stop us from constantly shifting our alliances and theories. The reveal (no spoilers) even packs in a nice twist that I didn't quite anticipate. So that's...good.

Retreat is...good. It's fine. It's beautifully shot, well-acted, and gets its job done in just over 90 minutes. Unfortunately, its job is just misery.

Scotland can be dreary, and it feels like that mood just coated all of Retreat's spirit. It's a mean film. To its credit, it doesn't fall victim to every pitfall (Martin and Kate's relationship, for example, proves to be stronger than you might think) but there's simply pure darkness once the film hits its last act. I simply didn't need this. 

High Points

When your cast is basically three actors, it's really, really helpful for them to be very good actors

Low Points

Boy did I not need this level of absolute misery in my life today

Lessons Learned

When spilling your deepest secret on a laptop, it's probably a good idea to enable some password protection

Chekhov's Inhaler will always be in play for any film featuring an asthmatic 

Never take a cottage vacation without packing a few board games

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't know who Retreat is really made for. It's made WELL, but it's sad and mean and never gives you that real bit of tension you might get from similar stories. It's there on Hulu if you feel like you need a mood killer. 

Black Mirror Revisit: White Bear

Last year, I compiled a non-definitive ranking of Black Mirror episodes. Once a month, I revisit an episode, starting from the bottom. We've reached the pewter medal position with my original #4, the fun-for-the-whole-family White Bear!

The Talent:

Charlie Brooker did his usual writing duties, though he apparently had to scramble to revise his script in just two days after other episodes went over budget and he finally saw his shooting location. British television director Carl Tibbetts takes the helm, returning the next season for the equally dark White Christmas. Also on hand is Michael Smiley in a small part, and as anyone who's ever watched a Ben Wheatley film knows, one should never trust Michael Smiley. 

The Setup:

A woman wakes up disheveled, with no memory of who or where she is. She's in a dank suburban neighborhood, surrounded by strangers who keep their distance but record her every move on their cell phones, particularly when masked Purge-like aggressors start chasing her armed with anything from a rifle to electric knife.

Turns out, a mysterious electrical signal has set the world on fire, turning a good chunk of the population into homicidal maniacs. Our unnamed lead quickly teams up with the resourceful Jem (the incredibly British named Tuppence Middleton), a rebel trying to shut down the transmitter in the hopes of restoring sanity to the world. 

The Ending: 

Of course, there's no need to bust down any radio towers because, in one of the more extreme Black Mirror twists, there is no signal: the entire situation we've watched unfold is an elaborate prison sentence for our anonymous protagonist, now revealed to be the most infamous living criminal in England. Victoria Skillane helped her late fiance kidnap and murder a little girl. Every day, she awakens to the same horror show. Citizens get to participate and watch as she runs for her life in a waking nightmare, only to discover (every day!) the horrible crime she committed. Talk about a life sentence.

The Theme:

Fitting to its chaotic nature, White Bear has a few things to shout powerfully but a bit incoherently. It's obviously interested in the public's appetite and how easily it can be steered down the darkest of paths. Victoria's crime is as bad an act as a human being can commit, but her punishment is more about transferring domain over her to those who think they deserve it rather than actually forcing any kind of penance upon the guilty. There's no arc to Victoria's plight: every day, she spends a few hours running for her life in total fear, only to have another hour of being reminded of what she did to merit it. Then it happens again, with her learning nothing.

And yet, the people -- even children -- who show up to The Victoria Skillane Spectacular get their catharsis. They gleefully watch a stranger they think they know be put on an elaborate trial, reveling in her terror, participating wherever they can. They leave remembering everything and feeling better for it. 

It's a horror show not because of what Victoria goes through, but how enthusiastically the volunteers take part. 

The Verdict:

Is White Bear the most thoughtful, mind-opening episode of the Charlie Brooker universe? Of course not. Is it the closest the series comes to an all-out horror movie? Heck yes, and a manic, enjoyable, admittedly derivative one at that. 

Technology Tip:

It's the rare Black Mirror episode where technology plays a surprisingly small part in the conflict, so I'd say the most useful tidbit is surprisingly mechanical: check your weapons. Always, just check your weapons

The Black Mirror Grade

Cruelty Scale:

9/10; Yes, Victoria's crimes merit the most severe of human punishments, but BOY does White Bear find a harsh way to make her pay, and by involving the general public, it takes society as a whole down a dark, dark path. 

Quality Scale:

6/10; Look, I kind of love White Bear, but I also can fully concede that this episode does indeed feel like it was written in a rush and filmed on a sale. There's an unrefined quality to it that kind of works for the grittier, visceral horror show it's going for. But, you know, it also isn't necessarily the highest quality 42 minutes of television. 

Enjoyment Scale:

7/10; As anyone who's read my decade-plus years of horror coverage knows, I don't need perfection to be happy. I just want to be entertained, and White Bear accomplishes that. 

Up Next (Month): 

It's horror of a different sort with the terrifying technology presented in The Entire History of You.

Black Mirror Revisit: White Christmas

Last year, I compiled a non-definitive ranking of Black Mirror episodes. Once a month, I revisit an episode, starting from the bottom. This time: my #11, season 2's White Christmas. 

The Talent: Showrunner Charlie Brooker does his usual script duties, while veteran British television director Carl Tibbetts gets behind the camera. Tibbetts isn't a stranger to intense criminal punishment Black Mirror episodes: one year earlier, he directed the even darker White Bear.

The Setup: Two men awaken on Christmas morning to their usual quiet rhythm, working a mysteriously unexplained job in a small cabin located in the middle of nowhere. The talkative Matt (Don Draper himself) decides to divulge his past to the more reserved Potter (Rafe Spall). It's a holiday anthology!

First up: Matt's ill-fated stint as a dating consultant. This being Black Mirror, a Hitch-like service involves contact lenses that let Matt see behind his client's eyes, helping the socially awkward young man land a mysterious stranger who ends up murdering him and herself. Next, Matt a bit too cheerfully describes his official former job working as a programmer for advanced digital assistant technology that creates a miniature clone of paying customers. The catch? Your clone (or "cookie") is, you know, trapped in a lonely existence of forced servitude.

Potter is fairly disgusted by Matt's lack of remorse, but of course, those who live in Black Mirror houses should never throw stones (no matter how technologically advanced of stones they may be). Turns out, Potter's life went off the rails when his girlfriend Beth became unenthusiastically pregnant. She considered an abortion, he became awful, and she turned on the "blocker," a literal form of social media blocks that meant he could never see her or her offspring again (though that didn't stop him from stalking from afar).

The Ending: Well, like current social media legalese, the laws are quite fuzzy, which means Beth's untimely death allows Potter to finally set his eyes on the child he's been following only to discover, like so many a Maury Povich guest, that he is indeed not the father. In the face of utter devastation, his fiery temper is released, killing his would-be father-in-law and leaving his not-daughter to freeze to death over the winter holidays.

It gets better! Worse? I don't know your definitions of fun, so here's the real kicker: Matt and Potter have been in a simulation intended to elicit Potter's murder confession. Once done, Matt is free with his own form of probation terms: complete blocking, meaning the man who made his living off of his charms can no longer interact with others. Potter gets a different form of hell: reliving the moment of his crimes on infinite loop.

The Theme: Much like White Bear (currently my #4 episode), White Christmas has a complicated relationship with crime and punishment. Potter is a murderer, and Matt something of an accomplice (though his legally acceptable legitimate paying job was probably far more morally corrupt than the crime that put him behind bars) but do their comeuppances feel right? It's a question Brooker has clearly always fascinated Brooker, and it comes up again in even darker ways with Shut Up and Dance. Is Brooker just issuing a moralistic warning about the extent of possible punishments? Is it a call FOR these kinds of penalties? Two watches down and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to take from White Christmas.

The Verdict:
There are things to enjoy in White Christmas: Jon Hamm dialing into the smarmier side of Don Draper, the utter horror of cookies (further explored, to lesser effect, in White Christmas's sister episode, Black Museum), and the twist of revealing "nice guy" Potter to be such a childish, bitter slob. There's some deeply cruel black humor to be found (particularly in its final moments of insanity) but on the whole, it's not a tradition I need to repeat.

Technology Tip:

Look, there's not much Potter could have done with Black Mirror-world gadgets to change his fate, so I'll throw a more traditional, always true mantra out instead: if you don't want a pregnancy test found, do not dispose of it inside your own home

The Black Mirror Grade
Cruelty Scale:
If the dating-gone-wrong is a 5/10, the cloning abuse a 9/10, and the leave-a-child-to-die-on-Christmas an 8/10, I guess that puts us a 7.333333 and so on

Quality Scale:
6/10; Hamm is always a dream to watch and Spall taps into a more interesting darkness than you initially think, but much like Black Museum, there's something just off about White Christmas's rhythm. The first story seems more Tales From the Crypt-lite than Black Mirror-daring, while the horrors of the personal assistant tale are given no room to really sit.

Enjoyment Scale:
6/10

Eh. White Christmas is another episode that lost a few points on its rewatch, in part because all three stories (four if you count the wraparound) feel more plot-heavy than thematically rich. 

Up Next (Month): War is hell with Men Against Fire!