Black Mirror is a sci-fi show lauded in its earliest seasons for having its finger on the pulse of technology and all the horrors brought on by rapid advancements. From the very start, the show was motivated by and engulfed in the fear of humanity succumbing to technology, or perhaps more specifically, the internet.
The title of Black Mirror comes from the empty, eerie feeling you get when whatever you’re watching on your computer/phone/television screen turns off, and you see yourself reflected in the void of the silent screen. It’s meant to be a humbling reminder of how we lose ourselves (and lose so much time) getting sucked into different forms of media. There lies the irony of this being communicated to us through a television show that many of us binge. Still, Black Mirror’s first three or four seasons were celebrated for their realistic, if not cynical, perspective on the rise of technology’s importance in our day-to-day lives.
Fans of the show began to sense a shift in the severity of the show’s voice between seasons four and five, a bit after it was bought by Netflix. It seemed to some that Black Mirror might be losing its touch.
The creators took a long break after season 5, citing the pandemic as reasoning to halt production on stories of collapsing societies. Black Mirror couldn’t serve as an escape at all if it was exactly what we were living at the moment. Season 6 is the first taste of the show we’ve had since 2019. Though it had seemed like Black Mirror may have been slipping off its bleakly witty pedestal of societal commentary, many fans were excited to see what season 6 had in store.
So where does “Loch Henry” fit into the omnibus? Spoilers for Episode 2 of Season 6 ahead.
“Loch Henry” is the second episode of the long-awaited Black Mirror Season 6. It follows Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and his girlfriend Pia (Myha’la Herrold) who met in film school as they travel to Davis’ hometown in Scotland, in search of a documentary focus. They find their way there to poke at the story of an egg collector, but Pia’s interest is piqued by Davis’ old friend, Stuart (Daniel Portman – likely remembered as the lovely Podrick for any Game of Thrones fans out there). Stuart and Davis recount the true crime event that left their sweet Scottish village empty: Iain Adair and his reign of terror (or rather, his secret lair of torture). A decade or so ago, a young couple visiting the village on their honeymoon went missing. The tourists were eventually found, thoroughly tortured and killed, in Iain Adair’s basement
Though Davis is reluctant to switch documentary topics, Pia eventually convinces him that this horrifying picture of the depths of humanity is more interesting than egg collecting. Davis worries that their investigation into the tragedy will upset his mother (Monica Dolan), as his father/her husband, Kenneth (Gregor Firth) was, in a roundabout way, killed by the events.
Davis’ father was a police officer who was sent to check on Iain Adair one fateful night. He was met with gunfire and, shot in the arm, forced to call back-up. Unfortunately, Iain Adair quickly killed the missing couple before turning the gun on himself. They were all dead by the time back-up arrived, and Davis’ father was taken to the hospital as the rest of the officers uncovered the nastiest crime scene their sleepy village had ever seen.
Davis’ father lived through the bullet wound but contracted a disease (MRSA) from the hospital that would kill him a couple of years later. Davis’ mother completely blames Iain Adair for the death of her husband, and rather than shy away from a tell-all documentary as Davis fears, she fervently encourages their investigation. She eventually sits for an interview, and the filmmaking couple (with Stuart in tow) decide to break into Iain Adair’s old haunt of a basement to get fresh footage.
On the way back, the three get into a car crash. Stuart and Pia are fine, but Davis has to stay overnight. Davis’ mom drives Stuart and Pia home as Davis bunks in for the night, left alone in his hospital cot. Soon enough, however, Stuart’s drunken dad (in the hospital for a fall from earlier that day) makes his way over to Davis. Stuart’s dad (John Hannah) has been adamantly against the documentary the whole time, but brushed off as a bit of a crazy old drunk. He closes in on Davis, about to reveal his reasoning as the episode cuts quickly between the hospital and Pia and Davis’ mom back home, eating dinner.
Pia is a bit uneasy to be alone with Davis’ mom, who has made quite a few casually racist remarks towards her, so she goes upstairs to examine the footage they got. She pops the VHS tape they recorded over—an old taping of a television show Davis’ mom likes called Bergerac—and stretches as her computer digitizes their escapade to the crime site. The tape tapers off and into the end credits of the show as Pia continues stretching, Davis’ mom downstairs frying up some meat. Davis, still in the hospital, desperately asks Stuart’s dad what he’s on about, but the episode quickly cuts back to Pia. The tape cuts off again, this time to a frightening scene: Iain Adair in action.
But the killer wasn’t alone, as they all thought. The camera turns around to reveal both of Davis’ parents eagerly participating in the torture of the young couple. The bits of foreshadowing throughout the episode fall into place as Pia sits down, horrified. Davis’ mom calls her down to dinner, but she can’t stomach it. She sees the mask the frightful woman wore while torturing people and bolts, trying to call Davis. A slow-paced chase down the driveway occurs, but Pia escapes down to a small river where she trips and smacks her head on a large rock. She’s dead. Not to be heard from again in this episode. (A bit of a letdown if you ask me, if not simply a cruel twist).
Davis’ mom realizes that Pia found what was on her tapes and decides to set them all out for her son. She kills herself and Davis is left to uncover this tragedy on his own.
After all this, the production company that Davis and Pia had been aiming to sell their documentary to takes over, crafting an intense retelling of Davis’ story, and the truth about his parents. Stuart is elated by the documentary’s success, as business in his pub is now booming with tourism from the dark interest of the true-crime obsessed. The documentary wins at the BAFTAs, but Davis is a broken man, reeling from Pia’s death and left alone in his hotel room to reflect on how the exploitation of the investigative documentary has emptied him.
“Loch Henry” is not a dystopian future warning about the dangers of technology. It’s barely about technology at all, really. Though the ending of the episode offers a bit of commentary on the inhumanity of true-crime documentaries or shows (like Dahmer), the majority of the episode and its intrigue is the crime. It’s meta in a bit of a surface way, with Pia asserting that people don’t really care about the crime or the criminal so much as they care about the gruesome details of the tragedy. As viewers of the episode, we aren’t much better than the in-universe audience of Davis’ documentary.
Overall, I suppose the episode relies on VHS tapes and their digitization to uncover the mystery. And I suppose the message is a condemnation of streaming services and their prioritizing of content over people. But, it doesn’t really feel like a Black Mirror episode. There is no mystical, futuristic technological creation like we see in “Nosedive” or “San Junipero.” The events of “Loch Henry” could’ve happened yesterday, and probably did. It’s not the first episode of the series to do this, the Season 5 episode “Smithereens” has quite a similar feel, though it still grounds itself in a scary piece of technology.
Loch Henry may be proof of Black Mirror’s straying from its original manifesto, but either way, it’s still full of engaging twists and turns.