Black Mirror: Black Museum (2017)

Very well executed

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The acting in this movie is really good.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The first story reminded me of ´Tales from the crypt´: very dark, a bit exagerated in the end, but true about how far human nature can get. The second story was funnier. The third was a bit too short in my opinion. The final is excellent. Overall, I did find some inconsistencies but since it is Sci Fi, the realism doesn´t have to be present on all scenes.General note for this season: I found it overall of less quality than the others. So I hope Charlie Broker gets back to the quality I found in the very first episodes that were really focused on the limits of the technology and how it can harm human nature.

The fourth season of Black Mirror has not been what I hoped it would be - the quality of production is higher than ever, but the ideas and delivery thereof has been less interesting than before. The final episode though is a strong finish, helped by its 'anthology' approach. A British girl is charging her car and decides to visit the 'Black Museum' nearby. Inside the owner tells her about a series of tragedies with their roots in technological advances that he was involved in pushing - all which his main attraction awaits behind a curtain.The 'sideshow' feel to this episode allows it to be more entertaining than many of the episodes this season; the tales have a darkness but they are told well by Rolo to have humor between them and in their delivery. Each of them deals with technology to keep someone around or to have an extra connection to them - whether it is the consciousness of someone in a coma, a doctor experiencing the pain of his patients to help diagnose it, or a killer captured at the time of his execution. The individual stories are engaging and well told with enough to shock but not to break us out of the "camp-fire" setting of the museum.The final story allows for a strong finish/twist in the telling. The ethics of it are a bit all over the place to be sure, but it is also satisfying in how it tidies up a strong episode. Performances are strong from both Hodges and Wright, while the mini-episodes also have plenty of good turns from familiar faces. Each story and the overall story tells of letting go, and of not doing something just because you can - treating human and emotional things as pure science or data; and I guess in the context of that, the overall ending is easier to take because, as wrong as it is, it is also a natural extension of the same.

Looks like they run out of ideas for Black Mirror and what we get here is a major mashup of other episodes + a political correct statements that sort of misfires.As mentioned by another reviewer, the title of this should have been "White Christmas Bear Will Be Right Back", since the main themes are: trapped consciousness. punishment for crimes and dealing with death.Not only the content is recycled but also the format: as in "White Christmas" three stories are told by the main male character, related to exhibits in the Black Museum - and let me add that the plot synopsis on IMDb is as misleading as writing that Titanic is a "romantic love story taking place on a luxury cruiser".Since this was a very woman-centric season, one should already guess that the male character is bad. Moreover the female character is Afro-American, which screams out "good".The stories are creepy and disturbing in equal degree. Perhaps the last, about people enjoying "executing" a death row prisoner and getting a "token" of the execution, just a bit more than the others.However, the final message we get out of this is that sadism and revenge are OK if you belong to a certain race/gender, while not OK for others, which I found extremely disturbing. Maybe because I am so old fashioned to find violence and sadism disturbing, no matter who the perpetrator is.Anyway, looks to me like it's time to shut down the whole BM operation, since they started recycling big time and don't have anything else to say.

This episode was the perfect way to conclude season 4 of black mirror. Watch it and you'll know what I mean.