Metalhead

Almost at the end of a lesser season of episodes from Black Mirror, Metalhead is probably one of the stronger episodes. The 40 minutes is stripped down to base elements. It is in black/white, only has a handful of characters, and is basically one extended chase sequence. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, a small group of survivors seek out a package in a warehouse, only to disturb a 'dog' - one of the robot drones that we assume has led to the slaughter of most of mankind. From here the drone hunts down the only character to make it far enough to be considered a chase. In essence it is The Terminator but without any plot or backstory to slow it down.

As such it delivers quite a thrilling and tight episode. Technology is in there, with examples of sleep functions, adaptable apps etc, but it is not really making a point on any of these so much as it is just grounding the episode in the recognizable. In the same way the warehouse could be taken to be an extension of the warehouses today where drone pickers are already starting to be used - but again it doesn't labor this point. The stripped down basic essence of it works well, and the special effects are effective - I assume a mix of physical work and CGI in some way. The ending is perhaps a bit corny but brings in a bit of humanity into what is otherwise a technological horror.

Not the best the series has to offer, but an strong episode in the season and effective at what it does.

This is one of the best Black Mirror episodes, along with Shut Up And Dance and The Entire History Of You. It's a tense 45 minutes with a bleak, nihilistic, ending. People complaining about it being about nothing going nowhere are missing the point, if humans put too much into making robots that can fight a war then they're asking for trouble and if a war is fought using them then this could be the sort of scenario the human race faces after such a war. The "dog" robot is eerily close to the systems being developed by the likes of Boston Dynamics and the Chinese Military, only just today the Chinese unveiled a dog robot that can defend itself and I only just watched this episode last night! Just view it as a straightforward sci-fi horror similar to The Terminator.

Among the best so far for my taste, even in black and white. It could be some kind of a PREDATOR scheme where a group of people are tracked down by an Alien machine. The link with the new technology is different from the other episodes, which remained in a more domestic matter. Here, it is more science fiction, and action oriented, with a lone survivor fighting against the "robot" who killed all his - or her mates. It is short, compared to the other episodes, but tense, gripping and very well directed by David Blade, who gave us HARD CANDY and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT before being totally dedicated to TV industry.

Negative reviews about "lack of exposition", "no dialogs" and "no context" prove that the viewers nowadays completely lost the imagination and need to be spoonfed with worldbuilding, just to understand what could possibly go wrong in a world where deadly metal robots were created as warehouse sentries.

I've never before ever felt so divided about an episode of Black Mirror, I either love them or I don't. Metalhead is for my part the weakest offering of a strong fifth series, but it gains my imagination for its sheer originality, indeed it feels like a stand alone episode from the show, there is nothing really to compare it to. If I were to sum it up in one word it would be bleak, it's bleak from start to finish, it's clinical, sharp, dark, indeed to only soft and cosy thing we get to see are the teddy bears in the final shot. It has a vintage horror feel to it, I think it benefited from its black and white shooting, adds to the overall bleak theme. It's almost like they took a snapshot from a movie, keeping only the action packed ending, we get no explanation, no solution, just the core action. Charlie Brooker invites us into a post apocalyptic world, but allows us to invent for ourselves the cause, was it the AI, or something else? I felt uncomfortable from beginning to end, possibly one of the scariest Black Mirror episodes to date, it's not one I'd visit frequently, but it was certainly a powerful watch. Maxine Peake is outstanding, the emotions she packed into it were brilliant. I think it's an episode that for those that didn't like on first watch, they're sure to want to give it another try. It is certainly thought provoking.