HonestReviewer

Black Mirror’s ‘Shut Up and Dance’ Is Unbelievably Horrifying

**Warning** The review contains spoilers. Please don’t read after (spoiler alert) if you haven’t already watched the episode.

Shut up and Dance, an episode in season 3, is possibly one of the most disturbing Blackmirror episodes produced to date. Even though it follows the same basic structure of the show, there’s virtually nobody to root for at the end, and it holds a lot more intensity. However, I enjoyed this episode, even though it left me not wanting to finish the rest of the season.

In James Watkins’s dark intriguing episode of Blackmirror, 19-year-old Kenny (Alex Lawther), a waiter at a burger joint, installs a free malware program called Shrive (nice touch) on his laptop after his younger sister accidentally infects it with malware. Except, of course, it activates his laptop camera and begins filming him. With an activated webcam, Kenny finds himself being filmed masturbating to porn. Moments later, he receives a text: WE SAW WHAT YOU DID.

Kenny responds after receiving the ‘footage’. This sparks a series of texts from the trolls ordering him to fulfill various bizarre tasks: meet a guy on a rooftop, deliver a cake to a man in a hotel room who’s being similarly manipulated, join forces with that man (Jerome Flynn) to pick up a car, rob a bank, drive to an isolated location in the woods and go alone to a drop-off point.

James Watkins, whose previous work in psychological horror includes the 2007 backpacker thriller Gone and the 2012 supernatural horror The Woman in Black does an excellent job maintaining tension throughout the episode and leaving the audience shocked at the end. This episode is written by Brooker and William Bridges, who also keep the audience thoroughly engaged with their tremendous script and additional humorous bits, that balance out the extremity of the situations at times. For instance, when Kenny receives a text reading “We are watching”, he frantically searches around his room and looks outside his window(which anyone can hardly look into because it’s on the first floor), even though his laptop camera is showing a green light. 

Ultimately, the episode seems to drag on for a bit once Kenny joins up with Jerome Flynn’s character, Hector. It feels dull at times during the second half of the episode as they are following orders because all you are left doing is waiting for the climax, with no clear indication of what is going to happen next. But once you watch the climax, you are left wishing you hadn’t had started watching the episode.

The episode leaves the viewers in disbelief, when (spoiler) we find out that Kenny hadn’t just been watching regular porn on the internet —he’d been looking at pictures of young children. This becomes clear when Kenny emerges from the woods, bloodied and shuffling, he gets a phone call from his horrified mother, who has seen the video Kenny’s been working all day to keep private, along with everyone else he knows. “Kids!,” she cries. “You’ve been looking at kids.” This leaves the audience feeling distraught, because at the beginning of the episode, the scene where Kenny, an awkward shy guy, is nice to a little girl in the restaurant, forces us to believe that he is a nice guy and also encourages us to feel sympathy for Kenny throughout his ordeal.

The ending is something we should definitely talk about. In the final scene, the troll faces come through to the various sinners, notifying that their secrets been revealed, is fantastic. Again, it shows an example of how the writer’s incorporated dark humor to try lightening the situation.

But, because our sympathies laid firmly with Kenny throughout, it turns us against him. All of a sudden, again, we are left with not rooting for anyone. The ending was an effective twist that removed any interest or liking for any of these characters. This was a story in which bad people did bad things and then got punished for it. Somehow, even though the trolls ended up revealing all the secrets and got these ‘bad human’ punished, nobody was left with positive feelings towards them either. Since the beginning, it had been indicated that the whole ordeal was just a sick game for these trolls, which made them just as bad as Alex or any of the other characters in the episode.

Aside from the story, let’s talk about acting! Alex Lawther who played Kenny did an amazing job. His work in The End of the F***Ing World is very similar to the character he played in this episode. He majestically portrays the character of a fidgety and awkward teen. Jerome Flynn is also very effective. His character, Hector, is sleazy, without being over the top. Also, the make-up work was fantastic in this episode. After Kenny emerges from the woods all bloody and bruised from the ultimate fight, his injuries are very believable. 

Overall, I enjoyed watching this episode because of the spectacular acting, exceptionally good writing, and the jittery directing involved. I didn’t take anything away from it, except to not root for anyone on this show ever again and also to cover all of my devices’ cameras. Thank you Blackmirror, for again ruining my trust in technology.