"Metalhead" is the fifth episode of the fourth series of anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. The episode first aired on Netflix, along with the rest of series four, on 29 December 2017.
"Metalhead" is filmed entirely in black and white, and follows the plight of Bella (Maxine Peake) trying to flee from robotic "dogs" after the unexplained collapse of human society. The dogs were influenced by Boston Dynamics' robots such as BigDog. Filming took place in England, with Lidar scans used for scenes from the dog's perspective. The running time of 41 minutes makes "Metalhead" the shortest Black Mirror episode.
The episode has a simple plot and received mostly positive reviews. It has been compared to The Terminator, as both works feature machines chasing humans. The episode's message has been widely debated, with reviewers discussing questions about artificial intelligence and the final shot of a box of teddy bears. The plot and short running time have received mixed reviews, while Peake's acting and Slade's directing have been praised, along with the cinematography and the design of the dogs.
Video Metalhead (Black Mirror)
Plot
Bella (Maxine Peake), Tony (Clint Dyer), and Clarke (Jake Davies) are driving to a warehouse to find something to help ease the pain of Jack, who is dying. While Clarke hijacks a van, Bella and Tony break into a warehouse. They find the box that they are looking for, but behind it is a four-legged robotic guard, known as a "dog". The dog releases a small shell that explodes mid-air and showers Bella and Tony with shrapnel containing trackers which embed in their skin. The dog climbs down and shoots Tony twice, killing him. Bella flees without the box. The dog follows her as she escapes in her car, with Clarke in the van following behind. The dog catches up, killing Clarke and then beginning to drive the van. Bella runs her car off the road through a forest, then halts abruptly as she reaches the edge of a cliff. The dog finds her and climbs into the car, but Bella jumps out and the car falls off the cliff.
After running away, Bella uses a pair of pliers to extract the tracker embedded in her leg and throws it into a river. She uses her walkie-talkie; unable to hear the person on the other end, she gives them a message to pass onto her loved ones Ali and Graham in case she does not make it back. Bella spots the dog and runs into a forest, climbing a nearby tree. The dog's arm was damaged when it escaped from the car's wreckage, so it cannot climb or shoot, instead powering down and waiting. Bella drains it of power by repeatedly throwing sweets at it, causing the dog to power up and power down again. When it no longer responds, Bella climbs down the tree. She comes across two cars outside a house, and uses a long wire to grab a key ring through the letterbox.
Bella finds two rotting corpses in the upstairs bedroom, taking car keys and a shotgun from them. The dog has recharged and puts an arm into a slot on the gate to gain access to the building. It takes a knife to replace its damaged arm. As it enters the room where Bella is hiding, she leaps out and throws paint over its visual sensor, and then throws the can to the corner of the room. Hearing it clatter, the dog rushes over and attacks the wall while Bella runs away. She starts the car, but the engine doesn't work. The radio plays "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. The dog follows the noise and climbs inside the car, attacking its speakers. Bella shoots the dog, and it stabs her in the leg; she shoots it again and it falls to the ground, motionless. The dog releases another shell, which showers Bella with shrapnel.
In the bathroom mirror, Bella sees that shrapnel is embedded in her face. She lifts a knife to one of the pieces, but notices a piece of shrapnel in her jugular. Bella speaks into her walkie-talkie, to no response, saying that she won't be coming back and telling her loved ones goodbye. As she puts the knife to her throat, the camera pans out over the landscape where multiple dogs are seen approaching and investigating. In the warehouse, the box's contents--dozens of teddy bears--have spilled onto the floor.
Maps Metalhead (Black Mirror)
Production
Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, Netflix commissioned the series for 12 episodes (split into two series of six episodes) in September 2015 with a bid of $40 million, and in March 2016, Netflix outbid Channel 4 for the right to distribute the series in the UK. The six episodes in series four were released on Netflix simultaneously on 29 December 2017. "Metalhead" is listed as the fifth episode, though as each episode is standalone the episodes can be watched in any order.
The episode was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. Maxine Peake stars in the episode as Bella. Joel Collins worked as the production designer, while Krzysztof Penderecki composed the episode's soundtrack.
"Metalhead" is the shortest episode of Black Mirror, with a length of 41 minutes. It was filmed in black and white, a style which had been considered for Black Mirror before but never used. It was an idea suggested by the director David Slade to bring to mind old horror films and to match the "oppressive nature" of the episode. Brooker suggested using the Steven Spielberg films Duel and Jaws as inspiration. An influence for Slade was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Jones felt that the story presented a world devoid of hope, and filming "a world drained of color felt right". Slade reports that though ideas of biological events or apocalypses were considered, the episode does not suggest a backstory for the world in order to focus on the conflict between Bella and the dog.
Slade initially received the script in June 2016, whilst finishing work on the first series of American Gods. Slade was involved in Peake's casting, and had a large amount of autonomy during filming. A large amount of location scouting was carried out, with Slade looking for "incredibly soft and overcast" light and "desolation". The 12-day shoot took place in England, largely in Devon and around London. With minimal dialogue in the episode, Slade noted that scenes were divided into many brief shots, as scenes utilising green screens were difficult for the actor. The episode's soundtrack was inspired partially by 1980 horror film The Shining.
Brooker came up with the episode's central idea while watching videos of Boston Dynamics' robotics products such as BigDog. He found that there was something "creepy" in how the products, if knocked over, would look helpless as they worked to regain their stance. Brooker originally wanted the episode to be entirely free from dialogue, similar to the film All Is Lost. Brooker's original script featured a human operating the dog from his home, including a scene where the operator left the "control unit" to give his kids a bath. However, this felt "superfluous", so the intention became for the episode to tell "a very simple story" and hence Brooker pared back the plot.
The dogs' backstories were conceived of from early on, with Slade saying they would "probably be a piece of military hardware" and have "enough artificial intelligence to problem solve". Camouflage for the dogs was designed but not used. Real Lidar scans were used to create the scenes shown from the dog's perspective. Collins came up with the idea that in the scene where the dog escapes the car wreckage, the release of its limb would be similar to drill chuck, and notes that the dog is "almost humanized" by its movement and damaged arm. Collins also compared the dog's multifaceted limbs to Pin Art.
The final scene shows a case full of teddy bears, which were yellow in real life but appear white in the episode. Brooker originally considered a gadget such as a Game Boy instead of a teddy bear, but Slade insisted on "something that you can touch, that you would hold to you, that would give you comfort". The teddy bears were intended by Slade to be the only "soft and comforting" element of the story.
Marketing
In May 2017, a Reddit post unofficially announced the names and directors of the six episodes in series 4 of Black Mirror. The first trailer for the series was released by Netflix on 25 August 2017, and contained the six episode titles. In October 2017, Jones revealed that "Metalhead" was filmed in black and white.
Beginning on 24 November 2017, Netflix published a series of posters and trailers for the fourth series of the show, referred to as the "13 Days of Black Mirror". The poster for "Metalhead" was released on 2 December, and the episode's trailer was released on 3 December. The following day, Netflix published a trailer featuring an amalgamation of scenes from the fourth series, which announced that the series would be released on 29 December.
Analysis
"Metalhead" has been described as genre fiction and low concept. Its tone is "truly hopeless". The episode is "pared-down and gimmick-free" and has "the most minimal plot in the series". The Ringer's Alison Herman writes that it is the only episode that can not be read as an allegory. Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent says it is "perhaps the scariest" episode of Black Mirror, while The Verge's Bryan Bishop and his wife were "literally squirming" while watching. However, The Atlantic reviewer David Sims comments that it "doesn't play up the gore" when compared to other one-person survival fiction.
Comparisons to other works
The episode has widely been described as a simplified version of The Terminator, a 1984 film which--similar to "Metalhead"--is "about a human run ragged by an android's unceasing pursuit". It has also been compared to the "adrenaline highs" of Mad Max: Fury Road, a 2015 post-apocalyptic film which director George Miller wanted to shoot in black and white. Comparisons have also been drawn to the 2016 album Hopelessness, which "effectively communicates the cold horrors of drone warfare", and the Philip K. Dick short story "Second Variety". Scott Huver of Variety notes the episode is one of several monochrome works produced around the same time, with others including FX anthology series Feud, and "Gotta Light?" from the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks. Tim Surette of TV Guide compared the episode's horror to past Black Mirror episodes "Playtest" and "White Bear".
"Metalhead" contains several Easter eggs--small details which refer to other Black Mirror episodes. A postcard and the letters "TCKR" on a truck refer to "San Junipero", while "Callister" appears on a computer screen in allusion to "USS Callister". When Clarke hijacks a van at the beginning of the episode, text on the car screen refers to previous episodes, as well as containing the message "WHY. did. you. bother. PAUSING. this. you. freak". The white teddy bears at the end of the episode have been read as a reference to "White Bear".
Themes
The episode can be seen to explore the AI control problem: Ed Cumming of The Telegraph asks "[i]f you create a single-minded robot guard dog, how do you set limits on its ruthlessness?". Whilst watching the episode, Nick Harley of Den of Geek questioned whether the dogs were self-aware. Another Den of Geek critic, Ryan Lambie, believes the dogs are not artificial intelligence, as "their lack of empathy or emotional nuance means they're entirely ruled by cold, pre-programmed logic". Cultfix's Ryan Monty describes the episode as a "pressing statement" on autonomous AI and drone warfare. Bishop comments that "Metalhead" may have been conceived with Amazon in mind, particularly its use of drones to carry packages. Before reaching the final twist, Harley suggested the episode could have been about health care in a world "where meds are protected by government controlled, A.I. weapons".
Slade has stated that the "theme, if there is one, was to do with how important it is to hold onto our humanity". Commenting on the teddy bears, Todd VanDerWerff says in Vox that the message may be that humans are "ruthless in some contexts and quite stupid and soft in others". According to Scott Beggs of Nerdist, the episode implies "toys and art are just as vital to survival as the other stuff at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy". Digital Spy's Steve O'Brien thinks the moral is that "there's still room for a tender gesture" in the post-apocalyptic world. Bishop believes the story is about the "loss of human innocence" as a sacrifice for progress. Monty opines that the episode is about "human nature being crushed by cold, calculated machine effectiveness".
Reviewers have commented on early dialogue in the car, when Bella, Tony and Clarke pass some pigsties. Bishop believes it is a metaphor for economic inequality. VanDerWerff suggests the scene evokes "the grim reality of going from predator to prey", comparing it to George Orwell's dystopia Animal Farm.
Reception
The episode has received mostly positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the episode has a score of 74% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 6.73 out of 10. A Cultfix review gives the episode a score of eight out of ten. The episode receives four out of five stars in Den of Geek and three out of five stars in The Telegraph. A reviewer for The A.V. Club gives the episode a B+ rating. Stolworthy believes "Metalhead" is in the "upper echelons" of Black Mirror episodes, while Adam Starkey of Metro summarises it as "an interesting experiment and welcome palette cleanser" which is "underwhelming and hollow in comparison to the show's best efforts". Beggs calls the episode "gorgeous but incredibly dull".
Reviewers have widely commented on the episode's 41-minute running time. Sims praises the storyline as "taut", writing that it "didn't have enough time to wear out its welcome" or to "waste a moment". Stolworthy opines that the "relentless" plot makes the episode "feel like the longest" rather than the shortest Black Mirror episode, and Monty believes its runtime makes it "one of the most effective and skin-crawling" episodes. Bishop comments that it would have been hard for the episode to be "stretched any longer without becoming untenable" and Starkey calls the episode's length a "relief" rather than a "detriment". However, Cumming believes the episode's themes are not enough to "sustain" it for its running time, saying it "feels more like an elongated short".
The episode's minimalism is praised by Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club as a "basic narrative with clear and immediate stakes, and a threat that's just interesting enough to keep us invested", but criticised by VanDerWerff as "exactly the wrong balance between too much information and too little". VanDerWerff also says that the "simplicity does limit the episode's impact". Paste's Jacob Oller says that the episode "meanders for the sake of meandering", and criticises the plot's use of "rote action plot furtherers".
Stolworthy praises Peake's "towering performance", saying that it "elevates" the episode and increases the viewer's fear of the dog. Harley praises her acting as "wonderful", as the viewer is "immediately able to empathize". Harley also compliments the poignancy of Bella's "final call of resignation". Monty opines that "Peake showcases the absolute best of her abilities", playing a character who is "fittingly human and emphatic in her will to survive". Handlen praises her as "easy to root for", saying that Peake "does a good job of finding new ways to be terrified, angry, triumphant, and depressed". Cumming writes that the actor "has far more to offer than shades of terror", though she is "never hard to watch".
David Slade directs the episode. Bishop comments that he "hits the gas early and never lets up", by "shoot[ing] the robot simply, as if it's utterly grounded in reality". Sims praises that "every glimpse of the empty moors in high-contrast black-and-white photography jumps out at the viewer", while Lambie comments positively on the ending's "long, masterfully-done overhead shot of the robot dogs closing in". Harley believes Slade "does his best to conjure up some terror", noting the sparse use of music to create a feeling of dread. Monty lauds the lack of exposition in the episode, believing it is the "strongest aspect" as the audience can "infer [their] own thoughts" about the backstory, and "the true answer doesn't matter, only the situation". However, Beggs criticises that the lack of exposition makes it difficult to empathise with Bella.
The ending of "Metalhead" reveals that the warehouse box contained teddy bears. Lambie suggests this is "bleak humour" from Brooker, and another example of the show's "well-established themes about the darkest implications of new technology". Beggs opines that it is paradoxically both "face-slappingly cheap" and "an outstanding, deeply humane subversion" of apocalypse films. Harley criticises the "faux-profundity" of the ending as laughable. Sims criticises it as "perhaps a little too cute" and VanDerWerff calls it "nonsensical", going on to write that it "lands somewhere between affectionate exasperation for humanity's foibles and a sick joke". Starkey writes that the viewer is "anticipating a revelation which will flip perceptions on this world or conflict", but that the revelation never comes.
The dog's design has been praised: Cumming calls it "horribly believable". Lambie opines that the dog's first appearance in the warehouse is a "superb introduction", and praises the "spiteful and unpredictable" weapons used by the dog. Handlen writes that it is "impressive just how much the special effects team is able to get out of what is essentially a box on legs", commending the "creepily real" design of the dog, particularly its legs. Contrastingly, Oller found that the dog's design and animation was "too simple" and the black and white filming was "hindersome" in giving the dogs an "especially unreal sheen". Oller wrote that the dog is "not the imposing, minimalist murder machine it needs to be".
Episode rankings
"Metalhead" appeared on many critics' rankings of the 19 episodes in Black Mirror, from best to worst:
Instead of by quality, Proma Khosla of Mashable ranked the episodes by tone, concluding that "Metalhead" is the 12th-most pessimistic episode of the show.
Other critics ranked "Metalhead" against the other five episodes in series four:
Awards
"Metalhead" has won a BAFTA Craft Award, and was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award:
References
External links
- "Metalhead" on IMDb
- "Metalhead" at TV.com
Source of article : Wikipedia
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