In Black Mirror, technology is always the tool used by the characters to perform one nefarious deed or the other. The show generally portrays a plausibly realistic future in which technology has some very harmful effects on society or at least one person. In the episode “Playtest”, this formula is slightly twisted.
Our protagonist Cooper consistently avoids phone conversations with his mom because he doesn’t know how to connect with her after his father’s passing. He traveled around the world in an effort waste time before he has to confront his fear of communicating with his mom. On the last leg of his trip, he performs an odd job where he playtests virtual reality software. The developers describe the appeal of the game as somewhere where you are safe and can confront your problems from a distance, so once you are back in the physical world, they seem more benign. The moment that he engages in virtual escapism, his mother calls on his phone, which interferes with the signal and causes him to have a fatal seizure. Unlike most Black Mirror episodes, the creators aren’t directly pointing the blame at technology and the humans who wield it. Instead, escapism and running away from his maternal relationship problems is what actually killed Cooper.
In TV shows and movies, the horror is simulated only for the audience, but is the real world for the characters within it. In “Playtest” the horror is simulated for both parties, the audience’s being a TV show, and Cooper’s simulation being a virtual reality video game. Cooper and the audience experiencing the story with the same distant-from-reality mindset causes our expectations to be exactly the same, like expecting a monster to be behind the now opened and zoomed in on cabinet door. We both have horror tropes and cliches ingrained in us, so we both react the same to a horror movie scenario. This shared mindset allows the audience to very directly connect and empathize with Cooper’s character. Another example is when Cooper is instructed to go into a bedroom upstairs. Based on the knowledge that being horrifying is the simulation’s goal, he and the audience both know that giant wooden doors in old mansions never yield anything beneficial for the one who opens the door. People always say characters would act different if they knew they were in a horror movie, and finally with “Playtest” the character does.
Once the first of many twists reveal that Cooper can feel real pain while only being virtually stabbed, the scenario widens the previously established possibility space of the simulation. This realization destabilizes Cooper and the audience’s comfortable relationship with tropes and reframes the story. Cooper no longer has the previously promised comfort of safely and distantly confronting his problems, because he now exists in an environment with no basis in reality.
One the other hand, the audience watching at home still has their safety net of knowing everything is fake, which separates the audience connection with Cooper as a participant in the story. The audience then plays the traditional role of distant spectator, feeling sorry for him as he quickly loses his mind. That previous connection strengthens the horror for the audience, because put in his shoes of this extremely plausible science fiction scenario, you would act in the exact same way and suffer the same fate.
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