This year Halloween falls on a Monday. We had the weekend to party, so tonight can be another Halloween tradition–watching a scary TV show while burrowing into the couch and stress-eating candy in suspense. Although it can be fun to stay in with some horror classics, I’d like to offer a more unconventional alternative: a thriller in which technology is the meddling shadow hiding behind the curtain. “Black Mirror,” the UK’s modern spin on “The Twilight Zone,” just released a third season through Netflix on Oct. 21. The anthology series features stand-alone cautionary episodes presenting different hypothetical futures, based on the growing expanse of technological influence. Each episode is a new story that takes an element of our increasingly digital-dependent society and pushes it a step further, often prophesying a chilling yet not-so-distant future.
When I first discovered “Black Mirror” on Netflix a couple years ago, I was immediately drawn by its wacky abrasiveness and bold satirization of our society. Within an hour each episode holds so much to ponder on the strange world we live in and what it may become. Netflix buying the series feels almost too appropriate. An initial teaser of the new season shows a glowing Netflix logo branded on someone’s neck, ironically signifying that the company is a massive influence on our digital society and often a narrative inspiration for the series. Season three is just as much of a doozy as its predecessors, offering six new episodes packed with chilling prospective scenarios to binge-watch and think about our own black mirrors.
As with any anthology series, some episodes resonated with me more than others. The first episode, “Nosedive,” is one of this season’s strongest. The episode takes the idea of social media “likes” that evolve into five-star ratings to cement societal status to an extreme level. Bryce Dallas Howard plays the bubbly and manic Lacey, a person desperate to boost her rating. Every outward smile painted on her face can make or break her reputation, career and social standing. The outwardly picturesque, pastel world is truly a cutthroat popularity contest in disguise, mimicking our Instagram feeds. “Playtest,” this season’s most frightening episode, tracks a man who tests a virtual reality horror video game that mines the player’s own personal fears for its scares. The result is an experience that is a bit too immersive. “San Junipero,” the most beautiful and poignant episode of the entire series, is a love story set in a dreamy eighties parallel universe. It is a rare “Black Mirror” story that is not cautionary, but appreciative of technology, showing the potential beauty and wonder that can come from its endless potential. Polished with breathtaking cinematography and incredibly moving acting performances, it is from start to finish my most moving hour of television. “San Junipero” does what so many series strive for, but rarely fully achieve: present a high-concept narrative that preserves a grounded and deeply personal core.
Our world is filled with so many changing, bizarre innovations that were once thought of as outlandish. With our constant digital evolution, it is impossible to know the direction our future is heading in. Halloween is a time to frighten one another with mythical monsters and scary stories, yet “Black Mirror” finds a new disturbance: the future of humanity when our love of technology evolves for the worse. The title “Black Mirror” itself carries with it a metaphor that is just as unnerving as it is intriguing; we are constantly staring into a screen, but what does this reveal about mortality once the screen stops glowing and only our vacant expressions reflected in the black glass remain? Serial killers and ghosts are creepy and all, but for a true Halloween fright, look in the mirror—or more specifically, your smartphone.
