Black Mirror top 10 best episodes ranked

Black Mirror top 10 best episodes ranked

Hey friends,

First lets go over what Black Mirror is, for those who don’t know. After, I’ll explain how I rank them.

Black Mirror is a anthology series. Each episode is it’s own mini movie. This series stands out in variety of ways. The stories are very original, with wonderful cgi and camera work, have great actors and usually have a strong element of horror present.

These stories largely deal with society and the effects of A.I., virtual reality and authoritarianism upon it. Another huge element is the question of exposing evil within the human nature and what punishment is correct.

The stories often linger inside the mind long time after. They are very deep and strong.

Now that we covered that lets go over the ranking. I liked vast majority of these, so it’s tough to select the top 10, but I think I got it. Here is what I use for the ranking:

• Plot, originality

• 2. Acting

• 3. Dialogue

• 4. Logic — does it make sense

• 5. Emotional response.

Before I start lets be clear, there will be HUGE spoilers, so if you’d like to just see the names of my top 10 and watch them first, scroll to the very bottom and I’ll have the top 10 listed there without descriptions.

10. USS Callister.

You know when a person is a genius in their field, but are completely unable to connect to others, or speak straight to others? This is one of the issues tackled in this episode. A loner genius coder who started a company together with his friend is constantly angry at everyone in the office, but instead of telling them what he is upset about, he takes their dna and created virtual copies of them within a virtual reality game he has at home. Thus we can observe his true nature as he loves to humiliate and torture them. It shows how someone who looks calm and timid on the outside can be a totally different person on the inside. Eventually the copies figure out a way to outsmart him and he ends up stuck inside of the virtual world. Like many Black Mirror episodes we are left hanging by not knowing whether he will die or not.

9. White Bear.

Truly a brutal tale. A woman wakes up in a chair inside a house. She has no memory of who she is. There is a photograph of a little girl, she assumes it’s a daughter she has to find. As she exits the house she seems everyone just staring at her and filming her. Then a man in a mask appears with a weapon and begins hunting her. As she goes through various horrific encounters, we might assume this is some deprived future world, but as the night comes to a close, the woman is caught and she is revealed to herself and an audience as a child killer. Our perspective completely shifts. Her punishment is having her memory wiped and each day live through the horror again, while volunteers for the show film her.

8. Loch Henry.

A couple, girlfriend and boyfriend, go back to the guy’s hometown where they plan to film a rather boring documentary. As the girl meets the guy’s mother and finds out about the town, father’s death and why tourists left, she has another thoughts. A serial killer who shot the guy’s father and killed tourists in the town was the reason why it became abandoned. She wants to make documentary about this instead and convinces her boyfriend. Accidentally, one of the nights that her boyfriend is gone, she discovers that the real killers were her boyfriend’s parents. She is chased by the mother, but escapes. The girl falls on a rock by a river and drowns. Mother assumes that the girl will tell everyone and hangs herself, leaving a note for her son and tapes of the crimes behind. The son completes the documentary and wins highest award. Yet in the end he site in a dark room alone, depressed, with his mom’s note. It’s powerful because it shows how little fame and fortune means compared to having real relationship and how evil can utterly destroy everything.

7. Shut up and dance.

This one has similarities with White Bear, but brings up an issue of how exposed we are in today’s world. There is always someone watching, or listening. This shouldn’t be the main reason why we should act good, but it poses an interesting question. The main character is a young man who is filmed by “them” through his computer camera while he touches himself. They proceed to tell him that it’ll be posted everywhere unless he follow all the directions they give him. Through the journey he meets other men who are blackmailed and we wonder why is he robbing a bank and even fighting someone to the death not to be exposed for such a thing? At the very end it is revealed that he is actually a pedophile and our perspective shifts once again.

6. Nosedive.

I love this one because it is all about Social Score system. In the future everything is based on your social score, 1–5, that others give you. Your job, where you can live, your car, stores you can enter. Everything. If you get angry, or swear, you get a penalty. Everyone wears special lenses which allow to view each persons scores. Main character is a woman at 4.2, obsessed with the score and with her rich 4.8 friend from high school who used to bully her. The harder she tries, the more fake she becomes. In the end she drops all the fake attitude and releases her frustrations, gets arrested, but feels free.

5. Crocodile.

One of the scariest, most brutal episodes. It really exposes how far a human might go to preserve their own skin and escape justice, but also it shows, once again, how invasive future technology and laws may become. Main character, a woman, is a passenger in a car of her friend. They are drunk driving. He hits a man and kills him. Together they put the body inside a bag with rocks and toss into the lake. Then 15 years pass by. the woman has a son, husband and a great job. While she goes away to a hotel to receive an award the old friend comes and tells her he will confess to killing the guy. She is desperate for this not to get out and kills her friend. After, she witnesses a man get hit by a car outside of the hotel. Story shifts to another woman, an agent that uses a machine to see peoples memories from a specific event to claim money for the victims. Eventually the investigation leads her to our main character. The woman cannot help but this about the two killings and the agent sees it. The woman ends up killing the agent and agent’s family, to make sure no one knows. Yet in ironic twist of fate, a hamster in the family house sees her murders and in the end she is arrested because they scanned the animals memories.

4. Playtest.

This story clearly points to future dangers of Virtual Reality, specifically gaming. A thrill seeking man ends up a test subject for a new virtual reality horror game. The game ends up being too unstable and he dies. I leave out many details because to understand the intensity of this one you must simply watch it.

3. Metalhead.

This one is set in the future where A.I. has activated dog like war killing machines to exterminate humans. We follow one of the survivors, a middle aged woman. The pacing and intensity of this story honestly beats out Terminator for me. The dogs are relentless, the only thing they are instructed to do is to kill humans, and they’ll keep coming.

2. Black Museum.

You get almost 4 in 1 sort of deal with this story. Main character is a young woman who comes to a place called Black Museum. She’s the only visitor and we wonder why. The proprietor is a very sketchy, former advanced tech person. The Museum is a collection of things that have to do with various crimes. Each separate story he tells her shows the brutality of experimenting upon the human mind and in instance, he is the common factor, yet he shows no remorse. In the end we find out that the young woman is a daughter of one of the victims as she poisons him.

1.Beyond the sea.

You won’t see this one ranked as high as this on most lists, but it’s my absolute favorite. It hits the nail on the head in each category of my ranking criteria. Josh Hartnett is in the role of the main character. He and another astronaut are far away in space on a mission, to be there for many years. However, on Earth, there are robotic replicas of them which they connect to each time their work is over. They can spend time with family this way. This go very dark, as a cult captures Josh’s character and his family. They destroy the robot and kill his family. They are arrested, but the evil deed is done. As Josh struggles in space, knowing he has nothing to live for, his partner’s wife feels bad and suggests her husband lets Josh use partner’s robot, to see Earth again and to connect. As this starts happening, Josh becomes obsessed with his partners family. This tale comes to a horrific end, as terrible as you can imagine. Which begs the question. When is it right to show extensive kindness and to whom?

Here is the ranking once again if you skipped to the end. 10. UUS Calliater 9.White Bear 8.Loch Henry 7.Shut up and Dance 6.Nosedive 5.Crocodile 4.Playtest 3. Metalhead 2. Black Museum 1. Beyond the sea