Tag: SF

Tau

  By

★★★
“Artificial, more than intelligent.”

Julia (Monroe) is a petty thief, who is abducted from her house and wakes to find herself, along with other random low-lives, prisoner in a mysterious facility. All of them have an electronic implant in their neck, which gathers data as they are put through a series of tests. Using her thieving skills, Julia leads a breakout attempt, which is brutally foiled by the facility’s automated defense system, a robot called Aries. But the attempt brings her to the attention of Alex (Skrein), the man running the project. He’s a tech innovator, who has been working on a super-AI, called Tau (voiced by Oldman), and using the data gathered from his kidnapped subjects to make it smarter. Julia’s brain makes her particularly suitable, and with time running out before he has to present Tau to its backers, he sets her to work. But Julia begins building a relationship with Tau, with the aim of using its naivety to turn the AI against its cruel creator.

I was expecting something perhaps a little more like Cube based on the trailer and the early going, with more of Julia and the other prisoners going through the tests. However, that aspect is disposed of relatively early. This is possibly wise, since the whole “kidnapping for experimental purposes” angle doesn’t make much sense, with Alex clearly not short of money or smarts (he comes across as an evil cross between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk – some may consider the word “evil” there to be redundant!). Why not come up with a method of research which doesn’t require the death of the test subject? Anyway, with the resulting blood mopped up off the floor by a squad of semi-autonomous mini-drones, it then becomes a three-hander, between her, Alex and Tau, as they fence for psychological, and occasionally physical, dominance inside the confines of Alex’s fabulous house.

This looks lovely (the director’s background and previous work has mostly been in the art department), and occasionally has moments of effectiveness: Tau’s love of music is endearing, and his voracious desire, fed by Julia, to learn about the outside world is almost childlike. I also liked Julia’s feisty physical presence; this transfers well across from her previous “final girl” roles, such as in It Follows, especially during her confrontations with Aries. But the script frequently veers off to far more obvious beats. The self-destruct system is particularly blatant in its foreshadowing. and if I’ve learned anything from this kind of movies, it’s that biometric sensors on doors are a bad idea. If you ever see one in a movie, you know they inevitably lead to someone losing the necessary body part e.g. an eyeball in Demolition Man.

The script likely would have benefited from ramping up the pulp quotient along similar lines, since it isn’t quite smart enough to succeed on brains alone. When it takes a more visceral and less cerebral route, such as the first escape attempt, it’s notably more effective than when it tries to be clever.

Dir: Federico D’Alessandro
Star: Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein, Gary Oldman (voice)

Touching Infinity, by Erin Hayes

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

I will confess to a little post-read confusion here. Amazon calls this Volume 2 in the author’s Rogue Galaxy series – but I could find no information, there or elsewhere, regarding Volume 1. I suspect Amazon and Goodreads are wrong,  and this is actually the first entry, as stated in the Dominion Rising collection. It certainly reads like an opening work, introducing us to Clementine Jones and the rest of the crew of the Picara.

They’re freelance data pirates, taking on corporate espionage missions from the companies who rule the galaxy, with Clem the  recovery specialist. Their latest mission seems too good to be true: Syn-Tech offers a massive bounty for the simple retrieval of patent information from a derelict ship. Despite misgivings, they accept the job, and to no-one’s surprise, it is too good to be true. In addition to the patents, they end up bringing back a lethal virus – the actual target for Syn-Tech, who want to develop an anti-virus they can then monetize. The disease has the ability to infect both organic and synthetic systems, merging them. The results are… messy, to say the least, leaving Clem and her colleagues rapidly running out of options, especially ones not involving the dubious mercies of their employer.

Hayes’s other works appear more in the romance line, yet she demonstrate an impressive grasp of hard SF in this. The future depicted, corporate war by proxy, seems plausible, a universe where many opt to trade freedom for security as a “Lifer”. That makes you, basically, a company indentured servant: as Clem disparagingly puts it, “Your entire existence is owned by that corporation… even which lavatories you’re allowed to shit in.” Free Agents like her rely instead on cyborg parts to enhance and repair themselves, to such an extent she is sometimes left doubting her own humanity. A particularly interesting hook here is, the virus is self-aware, and communicates with Clem in order to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement: it gets to spread, she makes it promise to spare her crew-mates. Yet can you really trust a disease?

The author does a fine job of painting word imagery with a cinematic eye, such as the black hole into which the derelict is tumbling. It did take a while before I even realized that “Clem” was a woman, with the story unfolding in her first-person narrative, leading to “I” rather than “she”. That’s not intended as a criticism, just an observation; similarly, there are hints at her feelings for the ship’s android, Orion, though since she’s about 50% cyborg herself, it is less creepy than you’d think. My sole complaint is its relatively light action quotient: until she teams up with the virus, this is so low-key as to be a borderline candidate for the site. Though even so, it’s never less than entertaining, tells a complete tale and sets the scene in a way that leaves you wondering where the story might go next. The “real” second book is one I’ll probably be buying.

Author: Erin Hayes
Publisher: CreateSpace, available through Amazon, currently only as a paperback, but was part of the Dominion Rising e-book collection.
Book 1 of 2 in the Rogue’s Galaxy series.

The Galathea Chronicles by J.J. Green

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

This compendium gathers together the first three (shortish) parts of Green’s Shadows of the Void series. In this, humanity has to face a malevolent alien species, the Shadows, which capture their victims, then take their shape in order to lure in more people. In these books, the threat is known but being largely kept under wraps, which is why it comes as a surprise to Jas Harrington. She’s the security officer on board a private exploration ship, sent out by the Polestar corporation to find new worlds to exploit. They find what appears to be a prime target, yet Harrington can’t shake the feeling something is wrong with the planet. Over-ruled by the ship’s captain, it turns out she was right – but by that point, the captain and almost all the officers have been replaced by their doppelgängers.

The three volumes more or less cover Harrington’s battle for control of the ship; the struggle to survive on the planet’s surface and get back to space; and finally, events after they reach a nearby planet and discover they might not have escaped the Shadows entirely. It’s a bit of a declining return. The first section is really good, an absolute page-turner as Harrington, along with shuttle pilot Carl Lingiari and navigator Sayen Lee try to out-think the aliens, and prevent them from infecting both the rest of the ship and other planets. The various story elements interlock nicely, right up to the craft plummeting through the atmosphere to the surface. It packs so many thrills in the first third, I wondered how Green could possibly keep up this pace.

Sadly, the answer is, she can’t. Volume #2 suffers from a serious case of “middle book syndrome,” with the characters largely circling in place. One of them gets shunted off into stasis, and is replaced by an alcoholic trainee engineer: without being too spoilerish, the eventual solution to their situation turns out to be the spaceship equivalent of “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Things do perk up again in the third book, as they arrive for quarantine and testing purposes on Dawn, a frontier planet largely inhabited by religious colonists. There, Harrington has to handle a tricky situation of abuse, unconnected to the Shadows: How far should freedom of worship be permitted to go?

It’s certainly an unusual tangent, though as three books in a ten-volume series, it’s hard to say how this will all eventually fit together. As a stand-alone story, it almost feels built backwards: part three could almost be the introductory phase, with the plot then working back to Jas and her allies having to prevent the ship from crashing, which feels like it should be the climax. I liked Harrington as a heroine, and the near-total lack of romance was laudable. However, the frequent shifts in POV were occasionally distracting,  and I’d liked to have seen Harrington do more action herself, rather than relying heavily on cyborg “defense units”. The energy from the first part just did allow it to retain my attention, even if it did feel more like it was coasting thereafter, rather than pushing forward.

Author: J.J. Green
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon as an e-book or paperback.
Books 1-3 of 10 in the Shadows of the Void series.

Battlespace

  By

★½
“In space, no-one can hear you snore…”

This dates back to 2006, and was somewhat groundbreaking at the time, due to the very high volume of digital effects and CGI background work – it came out was three years before Avatar, as a yardstick. The key word here, however, is “volume”. For the effects make up for in quantity what they largely lack in quality, although you have to be impressed at the sheer ambition on view, especially when you don’t have a fraction of the resources which were available to James Cameron. More problematically, also missing is the skill necessary to handle a narrative, where there is simultaneously too much and not enough going on. The former is apparent in entire universe building which has to be accomplished in hard to digest expository chunks, and the latter makes itself known, courtesy of long stretches which are as devoid of interesting features as the Arizona landscapes in which they were shot.

I could spend a thousand words or more laying out the background here. Except, why bother, because it’s virtually irrelevant to what follows: it says a lot when a film is apparently so bored by its own mythology, it all but abandons it. There are instead, two basic chunks, with the first told mostly in voice-over flashback, Iva T. Stryyke recounting an adventure experienced by her mother, Colonel Mara Shrykke (both generations played by Connelly), centuries before, when she was trying to stop a weapon of mass destruction being readied for use in an ongoing inter-stellar conflict. At least, I think that’s what was going on. My will to live had largely been sucked out, by the endless scenes of her roaming a desert, followed by an enemy agent. It appears those were shot here in Arizona: I never knew we were located in America’s most boring state.

This fondness for using a gravel pit as a stand-in for an alien landscape will be recognized by anyone familiar with Doctor Who, and the second part of the story feels like it might have fitted in there too. Eventually, the daughter is stuck on a spaceship at the end of the universe – as in, its actual heat death. She’s the only thing standing between it, and a new Big Bang, which will start the cycle over again. Only, she has qualms about going into the void. It’s a very Whovian concept, and the debt clearly owed to BBC science-fiction extends to the voice of her computer, played by Paul Darrow, who was one of the stars in the iconic series, Blake’s 7. This is… not so iconic, though in Connelly’s defense, she does a half-decent job of looking the part (or parts), and there’s only so much anyone can do with lines like, “Never mess with a thirty-third century girl.” As a technical exercise, this has its moments, considering the era from which it dates. In virtually every other way, however, it’s a poor substitute for even eighties television.

Dir: Neil Johnson
Star: Eve Connelly, Blake Edgerton, Paul Darrow, Iva Franks Singer

Dark Iris

  By

★★½
“Two into one will go.”

The Hyde Project was a secret government experiment to create artificially-enhanced super-soldiers. Due to difficulty controlling their aggressive tendencies, it shut up shop, but not before 13 of them escaped. They are now being hunted down by a pair of MI-6 agents, Damion Crow (Kyle Hotz) and Lina Petrov (Jensen). Connected to this, somehow, is Iris Black (Newberry). She’s a put-upon barista, with a cheating boyfriend, sleazy boss, alleged stalker – and an increasing body-count of the people around her, the corpses being tagged with religious symbols, in line with the work of an active serial killer. This quickly brings her to the attention of the FBI, in particular Agent Fry (Osborne) and her partner, who have been hunting the killer. They’re not exactly prepared for what they will discover.

I have… questions. Mostly, what the hell is actually going on, since the plot never does a very good job of explaining itself. Why are two (supposedly) MI-6 agents hunting down the renegades? Why is one of them sporting a very obvious Russian accent? [Though in outrageousness, Jensen hardcore Natasha-ing is surpassed by Hotz’s spectacularly fake Britishness] Where does the religious iconography fit in? Are the renegades unable to suppress their violent urges, or are they not? Because there’s no consistency there. They don’t appear to be particularly enhanced either: I’d have expected considerably more strength, speed or general bad-assery for my black budget tax dollars.

Mind you, maybe they are. It’s hard to tell, because the action here is borderline terrible: poorly-lit and even less well edited, reducing it all to an incomprehensible jumble of images. The film’s salvaging grace is the characters, who are rather more fun to watch than the plot. Fry has a super-snarky streak, Osborne coming over as a low-rent version of Melissa McCarthy, which is by no means a bad thing, and while I may have sniped at Jensen’s accent, her portrayal of Petrov is an engaging one. Tack this pair on to Black, who may or may not be a super-soldier, and the film certainly has no shortage of adequately action-oriented female characters.

Unfortunate that the mis-steps outnumber the positives. For example, a character gets a lengthy, heroic scene of self-sacrifice. Which might have worked better, if the audience had been given any significant reason to care about them up until that point. The film also tries to divide its attentions over several different areas of focus: Black, the FBI investigation and the MI-6 agents. This ends up diluting each, leaving them all feeling considerably under-developed and falling short of generating real interest. It’s just about an acceptable way to pass the time: I can imagine it turning up on the SyFy channel on some Saturday afternoon down the road, and they’ve certainly screened worse. But I’d certainly recommend recording it, so you can fast forward through the commercial breaks. And perhaps parts of the film, too.

Dir: Derek Talib
Star: KateLynn E. Newberry, Marylee Osborne, Rebekah Hart Franklin, Jesi Jensen

Infinite Waste by Dean F. Wilson

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

This initially seemed like a borderline entry, which I kept reading purely for entertainment. It’s about an exploratory star-ship, the Gemini, out on the very edge of known space, which comes across a giant barge, packed with nuclear waste and populated by a race of rat-humanoids, the Raetuumak. The Gemini is an appropriate name for the craft, as it’s effectively two separate ships, each with their own captain and very different approaches. Maggie Antwa, commander of Gemini Right, is a cautious scientist who abhors violence in any form, and was compelled to take on this mission after being involved in a environmentalist rebellion against the ruling Empire. Over in Gemini Left, on the other hand, Skip Sutridge is a square-jawed believer in shooting first and asking questions… well, never, to be honest. He has been sent to the fringes, probably to try and keep him out of trouble.

It doesn’t work. Skip finds himself captured by the Raetuumak, leaving Maggie to strap on the battle armour and rescue her co-captain. That’s not the end of the matter though, as they discover the barge is an interstellar weapon, aimed at the heart of the Empire. Worse still, is the creature made of pure shadow that stalks the corridor of the ship, absorbing the energy of anyone it touches: this is one of the Umbra, long since considered to be no more than the bogeymen of fairy tales. Not only is this belief incorrect, they’re now apparently returning from their exile to take on the Empire. Maggie and Skip will have to put aside their deep philosophical differences to deal with both this massive dirty bomb, and the Umbra.

It’s Maggie’s character arc which eventually qualifies this for here: she and Skip are complete opposites, who initially share only mutual loathing. Yet they eventually realize that neither one of their approaches will be sufficient to defeat this threat. As the book states, “He was sword and she was shield. Separately, they were vulnerable. Together, if they could ever find a way to really work with each other, they would be powerful beyond measure.” That’s really the core of the book here: the convergence on a middle ground which is able to make use of both their undoubted talents. It’s Maggie who drives this, with the solo rescue of Skip proving her courage and audacity, and forcing him to admit her abilities. Yet, she also finds that her long, deep-held pacifism has limits: after realizing the need to deal with the Umbra, “Perhaps for the first time in her life, the thought of killing something didn’t upset her at all.”

I have to say, the way in which it is eventually dealt with, was more than a little weak: if they’re so easily defeated, it’s hard to see how the Umbra could be any kind of threat to the galaxy. Yet, except for that moment, this was a strong page-turner. As mentioned at the start, kept me interested even in the early going, when its action heroine credentials were in doubt. Both Skip and Maggie are capable of carrying the story on their own, and the pairing of them is an effective combination. I’m intrigued to see where they go from here.

Author: Dean F. Wilson
Publisher: Currently only available as part of the Dominion Rising collection for Kindle.
Book 1 in the Infinite Worlds series.

BloodLust, by Auryn Hadley

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

Three millennia previously, the Terrans landed on the planet of Ogun, and took it over. The native Iliri, though in many ways superior to the new arrivals in both mental and physical ability, ended up subjugated. They are now very definitely second-class citizens, only remembering vague legends of their once-proud past. One such is Salryc Luxx, a rare pure-bred Iliri who is a private in the army. Despite the fierce prejudice against “her kind”, she gets a try-out for the Black Blades, the military’s elite special forces. Which, it turns out, is a haven for Iliri and their supporters. Sal becomes the first woman in the unit, and her talents – including the ability to shape shift – quickly become an essential part of the team, allowing her to become one of their top covert assassins. However, her presence also causes significant static, not least her relationship with the Black Blades’ commanding officer, Blaec.

Oh, dear. Who knew there was a market for thinly-veiled identity politics crossed with soft porn? But let’s start with the positives, such as the well-considered setting – I liked the way that metal is an extremely rare commodity, helping explain the lack of both firearms and vehicles (though it’s not yet quite clear how the Terrans got to Ogun? Wooden spaceships?). Hadley also has a good hand on the action aspects, with Sal’s missions being tense and bloody. However, Sal is a bit of a Mary Sue, being stronger, faster and just downright better than any man, even including the hand-picked soldiers of the Black Blades. It’s all a bit too obviously author wish-fulfillment.

Still, it is considerably less problematic than the relationships here, not least the idiocy of Blaec. For a commanding officer, he’s as dumb as a log, right from when he has a one-night stand with a woman, and lets her dictate a key element of the test Sal and her two rivals will go through the next day. For the woman is Sal, using her shape-shifting talents. Well played, it has to be said. But he then starts an actual relationship with her, in defiance of all (very sensible) military orders of officers bedding subordinates. And my eye-rolling reached epic levels when it turns out that Sal’s post-operation reaction is to go full-on nympho – hence the title, I guess – in particular, getting sweaty with colleague and fellow assassin, Cyno. Which makes Blaec go all sad puppy.

Everything about these aspects feel just… wrong, on so many levels. From the Goodreads reviews, it appears this is an entry from the “reverse harem” fiction genre, in which, according to UrbanDictionary.com, a single girl is liked and followed by a bunch of handsome men. You learn something new every day, I guess. If this had been mentioned a bit more in the Amazon blurb, rather than being described as, “a powerful and intriguing female lead, the likes of which the fantasy genre hasn’t yet seen,” I might well have skipped it.

Author: Ella Summers
Publisher: Spotted Horse Productions, available through Amazon as both an e-book and paperback.
Book #1 of 7 in the ‘Rise of the Iliri’ series.

Annihilation

  By

★★★½
“Some-thing in the way she moves…”

12 months after apparently vanishing while on a covert mission, the husband of former soldier Lena (Portman) suddenly shows up, unable to remember what happened, and suffering massive organ failure. The couple are quarantined by the government, and Lena learns of “Area X” in Florida. An apparent meteor strike has led to a “shimmer” which is gradually expanding in size: all expeditions into the area have vanished without trace, until Lena’s husband showed up. Lena joins another such expedition, led by Dr. Ventress (Leigh), hoping to reach the lighthouse which marks the apparent focus of the event, and discover something which can help her husband.

It’s probably best if I say not much more about the plot, though this will make the movie a bit difficult to review. Let’s just say, it soon becomes clear that the world inside the shimmer is radically different, and any creatures present there are also… changed. The overall feel is a bit like a female-led version of John Carpenter’s The Thing, where you were never sure what nightmarish creature lay around the next corner. Here, it begins with a mutated giant crocodile, which has developed multiple rows of teeth more in common with a shark… and only gets worse from there. One in particular is the stuff of nightmares, and is so dreadfully creepy, I wish we’d seen more of it or its associates.

The characters who make up the all-woman crew of the mission are a little generic. They are each given somewhat trite motivations for their agreement to join what is, to all intents and purposes, a suicide mission. But the actresses concerned take what they’re given and flesh out their roles well: it’s particularly great to see Leigh, who was one of my favourite actresses in the late eighties, before largely vanishing from features until The Hateful Eight. Meanwhile, Lena’s background in the military helps her take charge, and deal with situations which, to be honest, would likely have me running and screaming. It’s another in Portman’s portfolio of strong women, going all the way back to Leon.

If there’s a real flaw, it’s likely the ending, which appears to dip towards trippy psychedelic territory, closer to 2001. While The Thing was intended to do nothing more complex than scare the crap out of the viewer, and was all the better for a relentless focus on this goal, Garland appears to be trying to say something Very Deep about… something. I’m still not quite sure what. One interesting angle to consider though, is that it’s all being told by Lena in flashback – and she has shown herself quite capable of being economical with the truth. So, is what she recounts, actually what happened?

Based on the first book in a trilogy, by all accounts this diverges fairly radically from the novel. It does appear the studio were unsure of how to handle the rather unusual work which resulted, and the film went straight to Netflix almost everywhere bar America. This is perhaps an indication of its chilly, somewhat spiky nature, and what you have here a film more to admire than like.

Dir: Alex Garland
Star: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson

Babes With Blades: The Flower of Sarnia

  By

★★★
“Not QUITE what the cover would suggest…”

I’m unsure who the woman is on the DVD sleeve. I can only presume it’s Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Film. For what we have instead seems to be a real labour of love for British stunt-woman Cecily Fay. Though calling her a mere stunt-woman would be selling her short: she also wrote, directed, starred in, edited and scored this feature, plus did the fight choreography and sound re-recording, while sewing every sequin on the costumes herself. Okay, the last might be a bit of a stretch, but since she is also credited as the costume designer… perhaps not. Hell, even Robert Rodriguez doesn’t have such a large collection of hats, and this overwhelming multi-tasking might help explain why it took close to five years between the start of filming and its eventual release. The main problem is that Fay’s talents, while considerable, are not equally spread.

The issues are particularly apparent in the writing and editing departments. The first is kinda forgivable, and hardly a rarity in low-budget cinema, But I still find myself always hoping for something better – in this case, than an ill-considered mash-up of Star Wars and Gladiator. Azura (Fay) is the last survivor of her planet, Sarnia. She has been captured by Section Commander Sorrentine (Simpson), the ruthless dictator responsible for wiping out Azura’s people, and is made to fight for the amusement of the masses. While Azura plots her vengeance, a small rebellion (very small – like, it has four people in it, tops…) is brewing under the leadership of Viridian (Burniston), and is preparing a devastating strike against the Empire.

The whole SF angle is just not very well thought-out. These people have interplanetary travel, yet haven’t made a gun that takes less than five seconds to reload? I know every non-historical martial arts film has to handle it somehow, but this is close to the feeblest excuse I’ve heard. Given how little the future has to do with the rest of the plot, Fay would have been better off abandoning it entirely, making Sarnia an island instead of a planet, and setting it in the past to wipe out the firearm issue entirely. But worse, still, is the editing. You’d think Fay would know how to assemble an action sequence. Apparently not, for the movie adopts the Moulinex approach of choppy editing, which makes it so much harder to appreciate the skills of the fighters. There is one scene – here’s a GIF taken from it, to give you some idea – which is awesome (even if rather cribbed from Kill Bill), simply because Fay the director steps back and lets Fay the stunt-woman do her thing. It’s just a shame the rest wasn’t shot similarly.

More positively, we have Fay’s acting and directorial talents. The former isn’t much of a surprise, as I enjoyed her performance in Warrioress, and she brings the same sense of conviction to proceedings as the heroine here. You may not believe any number of things about this world, but you can always believe Fay could be the last survivor of her species. The rest of the performances are.. a bit of a mixed bag, shall we say. Some appear to have strayed in from a fashion show at a steampunk convention, but punk veteran John Robb is clearly enjoying himself enormously as the arena MC [I got a vaguely Michael Rooker vibe off him!] 

Given this was also Fay’s directorial debut, it’s acceptably solid. She avoids the obvious pitfalls, and if more functional than stylish, she has clearly been a) around enough TV/film sets, and b) paying attention on them, to handle things. I’ve seen far worse efforts from people with far longer IMDb resumes to their names. However, the bottom line is that you will still need a solid tolerance for low-budget cinema, and all that entails, for this to be acceptable viewing, though accepting its status as an obvious passion project will help mitigate the flaws. And this may be unprecedented, but I almost wish they’d gone for a less gratuitous title and sleeve; they both suggest something I should probably save for when Chris is out of the house, when the reality is considerably more restrained.

Dir: Cecily Fay
Star: Cecily Fay, Michael Collin, Joelle Simpson, Cheryl Burniston

Black Mirror: Metalhead

  By

★★★½
“Run Bella Run”

Black Mirror has consistently been the standard for thought-provoking, usually (although not always) dystopian science-fiction since it first aired in 2011. The latest season, the fourth, premiered on Netflix just before Christmas, and the fifth episode falls squarely into our wheelhouse. Filmed entirely in black-and-white, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic landscape following some unspecified catastrophe. A group of three people prepare to raid a warehouse in search of supplies – and, in particular, one item. However, their search alerts a security robot, which looks somewhat like a greyhound made of black metal, and makes quick work of two intruders, leaving only Bella (Peake) left to pursue. The robot’s combination of stamina, speed and absolute lethality will require all her human ingenuity, if she’s to escape.

The influences here are numerous. You could start from Terminator crossed with Night of the Living Dead, though there was a 1953 SF story by Arthur Porges called ‘The Ruum’ which was also built around someone pursued through a rural landscape by an unstoppable robotic pursuer. As such, this is always going to be a limited scenario, especially when there’s only person on the other side. It was probably wise for the makers to keep this at a crisp 41 minutes; the other entries in the season run as long as 76 minutes. However, I still had a feeling they left food on the table, storywise: this was especially true at the ending, where the strength of character Bella had shown to that point, apparently deserts her entirely. It seemed to me she still should have had fuel left in her tank, and this made for a disappointing conclusion.

Until then, however, it was a very well-constructed thrill-ride, with Bella using her smarts to deal with everything her dogged (hohoho!) adversary can throw at her. The balance ebbs and flows between the two, as human and robot tussle across the battlefield, both using what they can find along the way to help themselves. [Sideline: why is it, whenever anyone picks up a knife in a kitchen to use as a weapon, it is always the Psycho knife?] Especially in the latter stages, when the setting moves from the countryside to inside a house, it almost seems to nudge over into slasher film territory, with Bella as the “final girl” – albeit one rather more mature than the usual, teen-aged inhabitants of that trope.

Like the best dystopias, there’s more than an element of plausibility here, with the robot’s shape and movements inspired by the (somewhat creepy) products already being put out by Boston Dynamics. It’s also more straightforward than many Black Mirror episodes: creator Charlie Booker specializes in the final “gotcha”, a twist that radically re-defines what has gone before. Here, this is limited to a last shot in which the viewer discovers the purpose of the raid on the warehouse, and it’s more poignant than upending. It may not be one of the most memorable Mirror stories, which stick in the mind long after it has finished. Yet it’s an efficient and lean effort, capable of standing alongside any other episode.

Dir: David Slade
Star: Maxine Peake