Luke Owen reviews the second episode of Black Mirror…
Last week’s episode was an incredibly sombre and slow paced show that was centred around one performance. This week’s episode, White Bear, however was a completely different kettle of fish – which is what makes Black Mirror such an interesting show.
White Bear was a visceral, violent, frightening and all together terrifying affair with some incredible visuals, an intriguing build and a payoff that seems to have split its audience. A brief look at Twitter has seen many people claim that the reveal in the third part was a letdown while others thought it was very clever. I’m personally in the latter camp as I think it asks more philosophical questions than a conventional twist ending would have, but I can understand the frustrations.
For me however the episode fell down on its lead performance from Lenora Crichlow. This was a story that required an incredibly strong performance to help us feel sympathy for her situation but her portrayal of the ‘woman with no name’ was too whiny and hammy for its own good. I hate to compare to last week, but this was a story that needed a Hayley Atwell-level performance for the episode to reach its full potential. With the payoff still fresh in my mind, the performance does make some sense to a certain degree, but a stronger and slightly less ‘am-dram’ style would have helped carry the story forward. As such, I didn’t engage enough with her enough for the climax to fully work.
However what sells the episode is the direction from Carl Tibbetts who masterfully creates a feel of unease right from the opening moments. Literally from the first frame of White Bear the tension is there and it never lets up until its reveal. The hunter in the horse mask wielding an electric carving knife was terrifying and his framing and shot choices were simply incredible, especially when it came to the onlookers (who were almost like zombies from Dawn of the Dead, only more sinister). There was some fantastic imagery in this episode that is so incredibly haunting and frightening. Even though we see people using their mobile phones to record day to day life, you’d never think that everyone turning their camera on to you could be so intimidating. Using the ending credits the way that Tibbetts did was also nothing short of genius and really helped the payoff.
I do feel that the story loses its way during the middle as we go from place to place waiting for the payoff and I have to question whether this would have worked better as a half hour story. The hour long runtime did help the opening moments of building tension but like many episodes from season four of The Twilight Zone, there wasn’t enough in there to keep interest up. Don’t get me wrong, I was kept on the edge of my seat, but after a while I did find myself losing interest because I knew a big reveal would be coming soon.
As I like to keep my reviews spoiler free, I won’t be discussing the ending and payoff in great detail, but I did really like it. As I’ve said many times before that Black Mirror is the 21st Century Twilight Zone we’ve been waiting for and this type of ‘twist’ ending is exactly what we could have expected from that masterpiece in television. I think back to conversations I’ve had with people about how they would handle criminals of this nature and they’ve always given Neanderthal and barbaric suggestions such as this which has always surprised me. While it almost feels fitting, does the punishment fit the crime? Should we not rise above them instead of sinking to their level?
In a TV age where we have shows filled with nothing but violence and glorified pornography, it’s a refreshing change to see something so well written and well thought out as Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. Aside from my problems with the lead performance, White Bear was a fantastic piece of television and if next week’s The Waldo Moment can match the brilliance of the previous two episodes, then this will have been the best series of Black Mirror so far.
Originally published February 19, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
