Black Mirror makes us feel terrible for loving true crime
Season 6's “Loch Henry” brilliantly takes aim at a problematic genre
TV Features True Crime
We are a society obsessed with murder most foul. From serial killers to kidnappers, mass murderers to family annihilators, true crime very much remains our genre du jour—so much so that a 2022 poll found that a whopping half of Americans enjoy blitzing through true-crime titles on streaming services, with another 13 percent going as far as to say it’s their favorite genre. Their favorite. Suck on that, drama, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, and romance.
Of course, it’s not all that hard to see the appeal of the true-crime bandwagon: There are some truly excellent titles out there, with the likes of The Staircase, Making A Murderer, Abducted In Plain Sight, Murder On Middle Beach, The Jinx, and The Keepers all racking up rave reviews and word-of-mouth binges. But can we all just admit that there’s something … well, a little grubby about our true-crime obsession? It gives us the same feeling we’d get from rifling through someone’s literal dirty laundry, flipping through their personal journals, or reading their WhatsApp messages without permission. It’s the same feeling we get from snooping through someone’s bathroom cabinet (nothing quite like the thrill of peering at someone’s medications and beauty products while you’re powdering your nose, right?) when they’re kind enough to invite us over for dinner. Except, instead of finding Finasteride and Viagra behind the mirrored door, there’s a woman’s severed head staring back at you. Go figure.
Much like Only Murders In The Building and and the new Based On A True Story, Black Mirror’s “Loch Henry,” the second chapter in the latest season of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series, takes aim squarely at our love affair with true crime. And god, does it do some serious damage in the process.
The episode centers on a couple of bright young things: Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and his girlfriend Pia (Myha’la Herrold) have made the journey up to Davis’ sleepy Scottish hometown to say hi to his old mum (Monica Dolan) and film a nature documentary about a vigilante who has made it his life’s mission to protect the eggs of rare birds from poachers. Good lad, that one—and a good story, undoubtedly, even if Janet scathingly refers to him as “the egg man” from the moment she hears her son’s pitch.
After a pint with Davis’ mate Stuart (Daniel Portman), though, the plan changes. Because Pia is absolutely mesmerized by Stuart’s recollections of Iain Adair, a local serial killer who a) kidnapped, tortured and murdered a couple of impossibly attractive honeymooners, b) fired the bullet that proved indirectly responsible for the death of Davis’ police detective father, and c) has yet to have his story given the glamorous Netflix makeover that all juicy true crime stories deserve, damn it.
Davis isn’t convinced. He wants to do the documentary about the man with the eggs. He wants to showcase his documentary at indie film festivals, make his name quietly and on his terms. And there’s no mystery to the Iain Adair murders, he insists. Every detail has been uncovered, every last terrible act pored over by the media. Pia, however, disagrees.
“The mystery is, ‘How could someone do that shit?’” she snaps. “It’s, ‘What the fuck?’ It’s, ‘Give me the details!’ And the details are so awful, it’s irresistible.”
Predictable, but genius, too
Stuart is mad for the plan, too, largely because his boozer is dying a slow death of its own, and he is convinced that a true-crime documentary would bring the crowds in. Half of the footage would be gorgeous fucking panoramas of the beautiful lakes and woodlands around the local area, he points out to Davis, almost like a travel video. A juicy true-crime story is the only way to draw the crowds back to Loch Henry. Hell, that’s how people pick their holiday destinations nowadays! And besides, justice for Davis’ dead dad! What’s not to love about this plan, eh?
Well, while we aren’t going to wander too far into spoiler territory, we will say this: There is more to Adair’s crimes than meets the eye. Stuart’s mostly off-screen dad (an aged-up John Hannah, which makes it all too clear this character will eventually have a larger role to play) seems to be hiding something, for starters. Plus, there are all sorts of clues scattered about the place that make it clear that Adair was by far from the only twisted fuck in the village. So much so, in fact, that some have labeled the episode’s big finale as … well, as predictable, quite frankly.
The installment’s predictability, however, is part of its genius. This is Black Mirror, remember? There is always more to an episode than expected; you have to go in ready to embrace all the Easter eggs and sink into all of that hardcore meta content like you’re sliding into a bubble bath. Light a candle, pour yourself a drink, pop on a face mask—that sort of thing. Because anyone who does so will quickly realize that “Loch Henry” is mirroring the storytelling conventions of the true-crime genre.
Think about it: When you sit down to watch a true-crime docuseries, you know what you’re getting before the ominous music and long-lens shots of forensics episodes even begins. There’s a formula to these things: a structure wholly comprised of repetitive tropes—the overexposed grainy photos, the drone footage, the cassette tape whirring ominously—that needs to be ticked off. A true true crime, for instance, is nothing without a linear narrative and a third-act twist. And boy, does “Loch Henry” have a third-act twist.
While Only Murders In The Building only ever lovingly pokes fun at fans of the genre, meanwhile, Black Mirror takes a wildly different approach. Because the intended audience of the Iain Adair documentary is those same people who dressed up as Jeffrey Dahmer for Halloween. They’re there for the cheap thrills of a true-crime show: the salacious details, the horrendously evil villains, the drama. They’re the ones who thrive on the sensationalism of it all, so much so that they often forget that, at the heart of this oh-so-bingeable and tweetable story, is at least one family that’s been ripped apart by horrifying circumstances. At least.
Questions about the true-crime obsessed
The episode doesn’t just shine a light on the ethical and moral implications of consuming media that entertains by glorifying the unspeakable horrors and evil deeds of twisted individuals: It also looks at what filmmakers lose when they succumb to the “easy win” nature of the genre. Yes, the Iain Adair documentary is an easy sell, but the tale of the egg-guarding vigilante was the story that Davis actually wanted to tell the world. His passion for that wildly weird and wonderful project had been palpable from the get-go: His unenthused paint-by-numbers approach to the true crime genre, on the other hand, is all too painfully apparent. And (again, skirting dangerously close to spoiler territory but without the need for hazmat suits just yet) he eventually discovers that filming a “successful” true-crime documentary might get his name on IMDb, but not for the reasons he’d hoped. (And that his taste of fame is every bit as sour as milk that’s been left out in the sun for, ooh, let’s say a full day and a half, too).
Of course, it’s incredibly reductive to say that the entire point of this episode is “true crime bad.” Give Brooker some credit, please. Instead, think of “Loch Henry” as the hilariously intense piracy warning at the front of an old DVD tape. (You wouldn’t steal a CAR, you wouldn’t steal a HANDBAG, so don’t bloody steal a movie.) Think about what you’re really getting out of the content you’re consuming, and consider the lives of those affected by the awful crime you’re about to eat popcorn in front of. Does it glorify the murderer, or does it center the story around their victims? Is it a reclamation of voices lost, or the further amplification of a twisted villain’s celebrity? Can you name any of the dead pretty women at the center of the story, or are they just collateral damage in this queasy idolatry of murderers most foul? Is it tactful true crime, or tacky AF true crime?
Basically, to put it more bluntly: You wouldn’t torture and murder a human being (or, at least, we hope you wouldn’t). And you wouldn’t happily sit down and watch a torture-murderer’s home video of their crimes (again, we hope you wouldn’t). So why would you want to watch endless reconstructions and intensely gory descriptions of these unspeakable deeds, hmm? Through the episode’s story, Brooker wants us to confront the fact that our voyeuristic cravings are not a consequence-free form of entertainment. He wants us to become ethical consumers (and creators) of a genre that is so easy to get wrong—especially when you’re making a story for ratings and ratings alone, as Davis and Pia (and Stuart) set out to do. And he unleashed the whole thing on arguably the biggest true-crime offender out there.
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“But can we all just admit that there’s something … well, a little grubby about our true-crime obsession?”Hey don’t be too hard on ourselves, the ‘Dude just straight up murders a whole bunch of other dudes for reasons’ genre is really popular too.
I think the real (or at least “real”) vs. fiction distinction is relevant, though. Nobody is really harmed if John Wick pencil-murders a few thinly-drawn gangsters (nor is there any real evidence that it inspires real-life violence), whereas there are many verifiable instances of people committing real murders because it will make them as famous as other murderers they’ve heard of, or of victims’ voices being ignored or erased in the making of some of these “true crime” shows (looking at you, Ryan Murphy).
Eh, I think it normalizes violence too much myself.
True crime fetishises it.
It does!
Every single super hero solves their problems by punching or shooting. Don’t see anybody claiming they normalize violence, despite being the most popular entertainment by far right now.
Superhero violence is a lot more more cartoony than John Wick straight up murdering a whole shitload of dudes. Odds are high that you don’t have the opportunity or ability to throw a shield at someone and hit them in the face, but odds are also high that you have the opportunity to find a gun and shoot someone in the face, and all you have to know how to do to accomplish that is how to pull a trigger.
Plenty of regular shooting in superhero fiction, and regular punching, which any person is capable of. Pretending like every instance of violence in those films is outlandish is totally disingenuous. You chose a ridiculous example, while ignoring all the real guns and easy to mimic violence. There are examples in almost every single super hero film. And besides that, they solve all their problems with violence with few exceptions, which was my main point. That normalizes violence. And besides, John Wick is just as stylized, have you seen the scene where they have a silenced pistol fight in a crowded public space?
Ok how about you’re not gonna be able to fly an Iron Man suit around and blast guys but you can absolutely buy a gun and shoot someone in the head like in, say, Barry. I don’t fully disagree with you but also gun violence is an actual problem whereas Scarlett Witches accidental blowing up embassies while saving a whole bunch of people is not a thing that happens ever. You can totally fantasize about being John Wick and having a gun battle in a crowded public space and then go out and try to recreate it. You can totally fantasize about putting on rocket wings to fly around and kick dudes out of helicopters but it’s not something you’re gonna actually do in real life.You can try to equate them all you want but gun violence and easy access to firearms is an actual problem, people running around jumping off buildings and shooting people with arrows is not.
You’re doing it again lol You’re cherry picking the stuff that can’t be replicated, as if everybody doesn’t already know they can’t fly or whatever. When did I say people were doing that? I am again talking specifically about the gun violence, punching, etc that can be replicated. You’re not making a good point at all lol If they were made exclusively of fantastic sci-fi/magic concepts sure, but they definitely aren’t. And I know you know that, you’re not arguing in good faith at all.What about all the countless times Cap, Black Widow, Fury, Hawkeye, Bucky, Punisher, any member of SHIELD shot people? With real guns, not sci-fi knock out guns, guns you can buy at Walmart. Why ignore all that but villainize John Wick? Because its bloodier I guess? It’s all violence, just different target audiences. And only one of those targeted audiences include young children. There’s literally a line in Civil War from BW to Cap “You can’t punch your way out of this”, that’s how synonymous he is with violence. I’m perfectly aware that the fantastical elements of superhero fiction can’t be recreated. I never said they are causing people to try to that part, at all. You keep going back to that because the violence I’m talking about is the same shit you say is so bad about John Wick, and you can’t defend it. There is so much gun violence and physical, easy to mimic violence in general in superhero fiction, and you’re just handwaving it away because you like it.
A GIS for ‘John Wick kills people’ gets stuff like this, a lot of it:
“What about all the countless times Cap, Black Widow, Fury, Hawkeye, Bucky, Punisher, any member of SHIELD shot people?”Searching ‘black widow kills people’, ‘hawkeye kills people’, ‘captain america kills poeple’ etc… brings up exactly 0 dudes getting full on shot in the face. Hell, SHIELD agents specifically use non lethal weapons when they fight people. Pretty sure the only time Cap uses a gun is in WW2 and Bucky really only shoots at non superheroes in grainy footage. Black Widow usually hits people or uses non lethal wrist stunner things, I can’t think of Fury shooting at actual people in any movies. Punisher I’ll give you, his entire character is based around over the top gun violence and I’d be happy to not see him show up in the future.
“You’re cherry picking the stuff that can’t be replicated”I’m just bringing up things as they come to mind. You can go to Walmart, buy a pistol and try to shoot people in the face like John Wick does for entire movies. You can’t go to Walmart, but a shield and throw it around like Cap..I guess you can get a bow and arrow and shoot at people but you’re not gonna be as good as Clint and someone’s gonna tackle you really quickly.
Again: No matter how many times you insist on it, John Wick shooting people in the face is substantially different than the vast majority of superhero fiction. It’s literally a violent revenge fantasy with the specific point of him killing as many people as possible. You’re going to say I am cherry picking and can’t prove my point because yeah, there’s no practical way to do it, but I’m pretty sure the lack of dudes getting shot in the face when you GIS ‘*any marvel character* kills people’ indicates a lot less face shooting. I’m willing to bet that John Wick shoots more people in a single movie than get shot in all or at least most of the MCU total.
So your problem is face shooting? What a weird arbitrary line lol I’m halfway through a Cap kill count video right now and we’re already at 30. Death is death, idk why you’re so hung up on the face shooting. Yes, many are impossible for a regular person, but several are just him shooting, dropping people out of planes, off buildings or dragging them behind a motorcycle.Hawkeye kills like at least a dozen guys in Endgame. Winter Soldier has plenty of gun violence in the actual story, not in flashback or archival footage. Sure, AOS has non lethal weapons, but also regular ass shooting. Coulson shoots Whitehall in the gut (BTW much worse death than getting a headshot, gut shots are torture) and Daisy shoots ward like 6 times within an episode. Hunter punched his former friend to death, just to get a chance to kill Ward. Coulson collapses Ward’s chest in because he shot his girlfriend in the neck. Fitz decapitates several dudes at once (granted they were Kree, but I don’t think that matters)These are all just degrees of violence, its all still violence. Your point is just that John Wick is bloodier and more visceral, so what? Super heroes solve all of their problems with violence and you are weirdly okay with that but have a big problem with John Wick. Which is just as cartoonish, just bloodier. I guess because its sanitized and/or not realistic, still their main ethos is violence to solve a problem, you can’t possibly deny that. John Wick does the same, but with guns. Batman routinely breaks bones, gives people concussions, internal bleeding, like long term suffering shit.Are you trying to say people are going around shooting people in the face at a higher rate because of John Wick? You sound like a conservative blaming violence on videogames. Is it normalizing it or is it inspiring violence? Those are two different things man. All this boils down to is this: You love superhero shit and don’t like bloody, visceral action. Despite both involving violence as problem solving, you choose to defend superheroes because its one of your preferred genres and say things like John Wick are bad for society. It reeks of pearl-clutching. My point initially is that you and other comic book stans are being hypocritical. Maybe it all normalizes violence to a degree, but I have serious doubts it propagates it. Violence is kind of just part of humanity, and we should try to avoid it. But I mean people were saying the same shit you say about John Wick about the original comic books, they said it about other violent movies, they’ve said it about video games and its always bullshit. You’re grandstanding because you simply just don’t like John Wick. For the record, I don’t even care about those movies, they’re fine I guess. I put them and superhero movies in the same tier of entertainment really.
“So your problem is face shooting?”An example of my problem is more realistic violence, like the kind that is happening more and more frequently in real life, not like the kind that happens in goddamn comic book movies.
“My point initially is that you and other comic book stans are being hypocritical.”And my point is that that isn’t true, because it’s not.“You’re grandstanding because you simply just don’t like John Wick”Nope, I have nothing against that movie series specifically, it’s just a good example of the ‘Dude murders a whole bunch of people for reasons’ movie genre.
“I put them and superhero movies in the same tier of entertainment really.”I can see where your problem is then and obviously we are not going to agree on this if you see a movie about superheroes fighting aliens and a movie about a guy murdering a bunch of people as basically the same.
I didn’t say they were the same, I said same tier. As in they are pretty shallow action movies produced just for entertainment value. If you spent another minute reading instead of reacting you might have caught that. Comic books stans like you refuse to acknowledge legitimate criticisms all the time, talk in circles and then crap on other movies despite your favorites engaging in the same thing you’re criticizing. That’s pure hypocrisy.Movies are not causing violence man, please let go of your pearls grandma lol Also love how you ignored all the examples of brutal violence in comic book movies, yet again arguing in bad faith.
I’d love to see some weekend warrior decide they were going to try to go John Wick on somebody in a bar with a pencil. Someone might risk lead poisoning but I expect would-be Wick mostly just gets his ass kicked and then hauled off to jail, out of breath and bleeding from the mouth and nose.
It’s precisely why I don’t enjoy true crime, so yes, we can admit that, 100%.
Seconded.
There are three of us!
Four. It’s perverse.
I didn’t like the episode and gotta call bullshit. Maybe the writing was undercooked but I didn’t feel the commentary coming through. It really just felt like they pivoted towards telling this true crime story because it was more sensational, then ended up uncovering a deeper, darker truth. The pursuit of the true crime story revealed a killer; in a lot of ways that’s a moral victory. I understand that must’ve been terrible for Davis to learn his parents were sex-murderers (maybe part of what took me out of it was the cartoonish nature of their torture videos, as well as the looming question of “seriously, why would you mislabel and prominently shelve the evidence of your sex crimes?”), but it’s not exactly like he was being punished for misdeeds; he didn’t seek to exploit, and I guess you could say he ended up exploited, but that feels like a conclusion I’d have to twist the text to find, not something I find the text itself to be expressing. Maybe they could’ve spent more time with him in the wake of the documentary’s release, but I wasn’t left thinking “oh my god true crime ruined this poor guy’s life; I never thought of the unseen cost of this entertainment!” He’s not in a good position by the end, but…isn’t it ultimately for the best?
I mean, from his perspective the last thing his mother did was murder his girlfriend before killing herself, but at least he won BAFTA because the documentary was now personal enough (something brought up when they meet with the exec earlier). I don’t know that it’s Davis that is punished, but it is surely a commentary on the consumers of true crime who go all in and encourage the exploitation of victims – like the actress saying she wants to play his dead girlfriend in a movie to him at the BAFTAs. He goes up to claim the award and doesn’t even get to speak while seemingly being the living victim.
I didn’t like the way they handled the girlfriend’s death. It felt like they just killed her off-hand because they didn’t know what to do with the character, and Davis’ reaction is not even seen. The only reminder the girlfriend died comes from that opportunistic actress.If the point was that he shouldn’t have edited a true crime documentary with her, because it indirectly led to her death, I didn’t really think that came across.
Yeah, that was lazy. Her death was also a reference to earlier dialogue about the killer taking advantage of all the rivers and deep inlets of the territory to hide bodies. So, tragic irony, and a convenient out.
Well, the earlier dialogue was about the country being dangerous, that it went on for as long as it did in part because people weren’t automatically suspicious when folks went missing, the assumption was that they had some misfortunate accident. Like the Bolton Strid, a little river stream of water in England that’s small enough that you can jump across in places, but said to be a 100% death sentence if you fall in, because it’s deep and the current is fast and goes vertically instead of horizontally in places, so if you fall in, you can get pulled down and trapped with no way to get out.
The point of her dying was to play with the trope of black characters in films, but also have you realize how absolutely screwed she was. It wasn’t a tropey kill, it was her being stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no phone service, with a sadistic serial killer, trying her hardest to get out of there. The episode seemed to answer “Why doesn’t she just…?” with her finding out that yeah, she can’t just drive away/phone police/run away. Also her death and lack of a body found were the reason his mom though she got away and that the police were coming to get her, and why she hung herself.
They did reference early on that people go missing in the dark because Loch Henry is such treacherous terrain so I did think that was foreshadowed and I did like that you don’t actually know what the mother might have done to her. If his mother had also been sure she had died, there was a good chance she wouldn’t have killed herself.I don’t think that was the point. I don’t think the point is really about Davis so much as people consuming his tragedy and making people rich with little thought to the collateral damage of the actual crimes like Davis who has lost pretty much everyone. If there was no market for the documentary, it might be better for victims.
That’s the part that I thought was most brilliant. We expected a dramatic chase scene, instead we get what would actually happen in real life, someone slipping and falling in the dark. I do think Pia was killed off by Brooker for plot purposes, but I think the plot purpose was so that at the end of the episode, you wouldn’t think that she had strongarmed Davis into using the footage, it was all his own choice.
Eh you guys are convincing me. Being in an interracial marriage myself, I personally related to all the fun awkward “meet the parents” microaggressions and walking on eggshells that came with the initial visit, which was material I thought was well handled without being too on the nose. So when Pia just abruptly dies and it’s barely mentioned again, it felt like the episode had taken a wrong turn for me. But yeah, her death was foreshadowed and it still subverted expectations, so I see the purpose better now.
“seriously, why would you mislabel and prominently shelve the evidence of your sex crimes?”I’ve seen more than a few people mention this as a supposedly “unbelievable” detail.But.When I was a kid, I had a couple of VHS tapes that were filled with sexy stuff that I’d recorded from tv – late night cable adult movies, Entertainment Tonight stories on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, that kind of thing. Not the kind of thing that I would want my parents to find (and confiscate). I put labels on the tapes that read, in big block letters, “BATMAN” or “TRANSFORMERS.” And they just sat on the shelf in the open and my parents never once thought to look at them. So that part of the episode rang really true for me! But aside from that, it’s a common trait of serial killers to be perversely proud of their crimes and feel the compulsion to flaunt it, even risking capture. (I learned this by, er, watching true crime stuff) That shelf of Bergerac tapes is a kind of trophy wall, and I think part of the thrill was that they could hide it in plain sight.
Your takeaway is much like mine. I thought this was a muddled mess. Perhaps if Davis was itching for this story from the beginning, then it least we get an (albeit simplistic) moral tale: guy seeking to profit from a personal tragedy gets his comeuppance. But Davis wasn’t after this story at all. He only reluctantly pursued it based on pressure from his girlfriend and friend. That it is him that ultimately pays this miserable price is just … confusing. If Brooker is trying to make a point about our passion for true crime docs, I’m not sure what it is.
maybe part of what took me out of it was the cartoonish nature of their torture videosTHANK YOU. I described the way the mother came into the picture to someone as “the same tone you’d use to announce that you made nacho dip for your son’s friends.”
I watched the Dahmer show on Netflix (the one where they romanticized Dahmers perspective and had a hot actor play him despite objections from the family of the victims). To me this was hilarious en Pointe. The entire time I watched Dahmer I knew my enjoyment was from the suffering of the family being exploited. What’s so funny about the episode is the press tour he goes on at the end where his life is destroyed and he looks dead inside and he’s being dragged around and celebrated and actors are asking to play his dead girlfriend. I was honestly in tears I was laughing so hard I was like “yup that is exactly how the victims felt when that Dahmer show was on”. To present a more nuanced take than yours..
Of course, it’s not all that hard to see the appeal of the true-crime bandwagon: There are some truly excellent titles out there
Counterpoint: No, there aren’t.
Enjoy a Twinkie if you wish, but don’t pretend that it’s fine dining.
In Cold Blood?
“In Cold Blood?”
Famously not a documentary.
Not really “true” crime.
As someone who generally finds true crime repugnant, I really love David Fincher’s Zodiac, because it’s a film about how true crime obsession ruins your life and leads you nowhere.
Ditto Hollywoodland.
It’s arguably the worst form of concern porn. It’s exploitative, voyeuristic.
“…his boozer is dying a slow death of its own…”Hey, where do I get me a boozer of my own?
Not till you’re fifteen
[removed – replied to wrong person]
A woman in Texas just shot her Uber driver in the head because she thought she was being kidnapped. People are shooting people through locked doors and for turning into the wrong driveway. Gun sales are up.Correlation may not be causation, but what chance is there that our obsession with true crime hasn’t made a lot of people far more anxious and afraid than they need to be? To the point where they are shooting first and asking questions later.
I don’t think it’s just true crime. The worst of stories have always been sensationalized for ratings, but now it pours in through social media streams, forwarded posts, and news outlets targeted at narrower and narrower audiences – all of it honed to strike your particular nerve. It creates a feedback loop among fellow online travelers that you used to be able to avoid by just turning off the TV.
For your argument to make sense, “true crime” would have to be a new genre, not one that is decades-old.
Loved this episode but I’m not really sure that was the message. Nothing bad happens to the “audience” of Loch Henry. They all had a grand time watching it and revitalized the town.
“Be careful with true crime or one of the producers might find out his parents were involved” isn’t much a cautionary tale to the audience of TC docs.
This was solid, then the Mazey Day episode made pretty much the same point about the exploitation and commodification of trauma by the media, but with a really risible plot twist. Also, for a show that traffics so much in unabated miserabilism and the pleasure of watching bad things happen to people, all of this is rather “pot calls the kettle black.”
“Risible” is being far, far more polite than I have been about that plot twist.I congratulate you on your self-control, because – wow. Yeah.
Shouldn’t take Black Mirror to know that 90% of true crime is wildly exploitative, and mainly gives monsters exactly what they want by broadcasting all the heinous shit they get away with.
Yo why do women love true crime stuff so much?
“Women be different than men.”Sinbad 3:16
Talking about the episode on it’s own I will say it was fine. It wasn’t terrible, but not great. I understand the show runner defending Black Mirror’s latest season for branching out and not staying exactly on the same theme as previous seasons with all the episodes. This episode was certainly the most grounded. But the commentary was there like other episodes in previous seasons. So in that aspect it was Black Mirrorish. How society now can take true crime and sensationalize it and romanticize it on another level these days thanks to the internet and social media. It wasn’t as interconnected or in your face back in the 20th Century. Davis lost his father as a kid under traumatic circumstances, but dealt with it and pretty much grew up fine. He had to be persuaded to change his documentary that pretty much reopens a chapter in his life he kind of moved on from and wasn’t keen on revisiting. In the end he loses his girlfriend, his mother, finds out both his parents were sadistic killers, and has his entire outlook on his father’s death changed. That a new documentary about what happened to him wins awards. Everyone loves it and is celebrating while he sits alone having now to absorb everything that has happened and will continue to happen as a tourist attraction of his life. So I personally see it as Black Mirrorish.The shot of him holding his mother’s note I interpreted differently. I think she was proud of him of what he was doing in the end. Because what she and his father did was their guilty pleasure that the rest of the world would’ve seen as sick. But now, thanks to her son, what they did will be everyone’s guilty pleasure. And she went out on her own terms. Davis essentially help took what his parents did and romanticize it for the masses entertainment.As for the technical aspect of the episode, I thought for the most part it was done well. I think the part where they were explaining that the countryside was dangerous alone getting people killed was a bit poorly executed in foreshadowing what would happened to the girlfriend. I thought the girlfriend’s death was also poorly executed. Understandable on how she died and realistic, but just poorly executed. It was just a bit jarring and a little disjointed. Maybe just needed an additional 15-30 seconds explaining exactly what happened with her showing photos or footage of the police pulling her body from the river stating that she was knocked out and drowned in the river. Like I said, the episode was fine. I’m not sure if it would’ve been better if it was a stand alone a movie instead an episode. I think because it’s a Black Mirror episode many people had expectations on the type of content they were hoping for. I enjoyed it enough, and understand the show runner’s defense on how season 6 went into different directions. It’s just I personally feel it might have been better without it being Black Mirror. But that’s another topic.
The girlfriend having no eyebrows was very distracting for me
LOL it’s one of those things you don’t notice at first, until you do. I remember the first time I realized Whoopie Goldberg didn’t have eyebrows, now I can’t un see it. Also what is with so many bald guys not having eyebrows.
The technical term is “alopecia.” It is often a localized phenomenon, such as with eyebrows, but it can also be widespread or even complete lack of hair growth.
No I get that, and have heard it before. But it just seems so often that bad guys also shave, or lose, their eyebrows. It’s not something I really noticed at first
never mind
I’ve long suspected that a lot of the appeal of true crime is just from interest in other people. The violence is there, but a lot of the content of the stories is taking a deep dive into people’s lives. I feel like if you took a story that didn’t culminate in violence, just made a glossy series documentary series about two people divorcing or something, digging up text messages and infidelity and such, people would still be engrossed. Doesn’t really happen, I think because it usually takes violence for that stuff to become evidence and for them to become fair game for the public interest.There is also, I think, a fascination with killers, people who act like monsters, but it doesn’t seem like that’s enough to explain the popularity of the genre and everything in it.
The thing about “true crime” is that it’s not really a single genre. There are true crime documentaries that cover cold cases that seek to bring attention to unsolved and under-reported cases. There are true crime documentaries like Murder on Middle Beach where the victim’s family are the ones making the documentary to try to come to terms with or get to the truth or what happened and who their loved one was. Then there are the documentaries that try to be an objective presentation of a terrible thing that happened, and other docs that are less objective and more sensational. Then there are the dramatizations that run the gamut from campy trash to genuinely artful takes on tragedy. And, of course, podcasts, books and articles that vary from those seeking to be informative and those seeking to entertain. I think to try to lump it all together as “people love the drama of murder” is incredibly reductive. Even something like “Inventing Anna” is true crime.
yeah, i love white collar true crime. i don’t like murder true crime.
What do you mean by “we”? I’ve always found the genre morbid and gross.
“an old DVD tape.”How do you do, fellow kids!
I loved this episode but possibly because I was addicted to the Dahmer show earlier this year while simultaneously being judgmental of myself for doing so. This episode nailed it on the head. I swear I saw “couple of bright young things” on a review elsewhere tho…