Summary: Davis and Pia are dating and making a film together. They visit Davis' hometown Loch Henry and from Davis' friend Stuart, Pia learns about Davis' troubled past involving a kidnapper and killer Iain Adair who turned Loch Henry from a tourist hub into a ghost town and indirectly killed his father Kenneth. Pia convinces David to make their movie about this story. Davis and Pia explore around and make their film. While driving home at night, Davis gets into an accident and stays at the hospital. Pia stays with Janet, Davis' mom, and finds on one of her VCR tapes that she and Kenneth participated in the kidnappings with Iain. At the same time, Stuart's father tells Davis the truth. Pia is terrified of Janet and runs away, but dies in the wilderness. Janet thinks her secret is out and commits suicide. Much later, Davis' film is a smashing success and tourism returns to Loch Henry, but Davis is still traumatized by the entire ordeal.
The Good: I've seen a lot of people dismiss this episode as "not true Black Mirror" because it does not focus on technology. I don't believe that this is true. This episode does focus on the impacts of technology in our lives, and what's special about it this episode is that it focuses on what is happening right now in the world instead of focusing on what may happen in the future. This episode focuses on real-life stories being somewhat fetishized by the entertainment industry through the creation of documentaries and other media products for entertainment purposes. I think that the episode explores this idea beautifully and perfectly highlights how this fetishization affects the victims of these incidents. Davis was a compelling character because we got to see how his personal life was destroyed by his movie-making endeavour. The episode drew emotional impact in seeing what happened to him, and it led to this being one of the most emotionally impactful episodes in the season. This episode had a far more realistic tone than "Joan is Awful", and that resulted in a more engaging and grounded atmosphere to tell this story. The pacing is fairly slow, but it's helped along with imaginative filmmaking, a beautiful and unique setting in Scotland, realistic characters, and brilliant utilization of suspense to keep uneventful scenes interesting by making us constantly think that something is going to happen. So many little things were done right. Side characters were kept mysterious to get us interested in learning the truth, Iain Adair's story is told beautifully to create an interesting horror piece, and the eerie and empty setting of Loch Henry gives the episode a spooky and unsettling tone. I also connected with the characters because they all had simple and clearly defined drives. Pia represents the entertainment industry perfectly because she seems to stop at nothing in order to get the best possible film. This sets her up perfectly to be the one to die as punishment for her ambitious nature. Davis is compelling because he is clearly traumatized and reluctant to dive into his history, and his actions reflect this at every turn, making it even more brutal when he uncovers the truth. Stuart is a lot of fun and brings in a lot of comedy, but even he is consistently written as someone who yearns for Loch Henry to be a tourist hub once more, with his every move being done in the hopes of achieving this goal. The story being told was really good and had a good twist at the end revealing the truth about what happened. The mystery aspect of discovering the truth of what happened with Iain Adair had me interested the entire episode, and the incorporation of horror/thriller aspects made for a uniquely entertaining experience. The twist caught me off guard and it worked well in terms of explaining some of the weirdness in Davis' past, providing a satisfying climax and conclusion to the story. The Bad: Pia makes so many poor decisions upon leaning the truth about Janet. I do get that she would be terrified and her judgement would be compromised, but the way she consistently makes the worst possible decision at every turn until she literally gets herself killed is almost unbelievable, and it's a level of incompetence that takes me out of the story being told. To be clear, I do like that she died by going into the wilderness alone (this was foreshadowed and set up earlier in the episode), but I found the choices that she made to get into that situation to be baffling. Pia immediately panicking about Janet, not taking any evidence when she left, acting incredibly suspicious, running away alone in the night, and staying on the road knowing that Janet would come after her was incredibly stupid. The Unknown: Was Richard involved in the crime too? He was so perturbed by Davis' investigation, and it makes me wonder if he was also in on the crimes alongside Davis' parents. It would make sense that he scapegoated Davis' parents to mask his own involvement in the case. Best Moment: Davis sitting in silence after everything that happened, emphasizing the episode's message on the damage that these kinds of documentaries can have on the victims directly involved. Though Davis was successful and achieved everything he could have wanted with his film, it doesn't help him handle the grief and pain of what happened. Character of the Episode: Davis. Conclusion: Not everything about this worked, but overall this was a very well told and engaging story with a powerful message and plenty of suspense. Score: 67
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|