"Playtest" is the second episode in the third series of the British science fiction anthology television series Black Mirror. Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, it premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, with the rest of series three.
The episode follows Cooper (Wyatt Russell), an American who playtests an upcoming augmented reality game in London while travelling. It is a horror game which accesses his brain and targets his fears. Hannah John-Kamen co-stars as a video game journalist Cooper meets. The episode was inspired by an idea Brooker had for an augmented reality Whac-A-Mole game which increased in speed until the subject went crazy. After considering Tokyo, the crew decided to shoot in London.
A work of psychological horror, the episode features numerous video game references and many instances of foreshadowing. The episode received mixed critical reception, with criticisms of the storyline and ending but praise given to Trachtenberg's directing and Russell's acting. The episode was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award, an RTS Craft & Design Award and a Visual Effects Society Award.
Plot
After his father dies from Alzheimer's disease, Cooper (Wyatt Russell) travels the world, ignoring phone calls from his mother. In London, he spends a night with the technology journalist Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen). He is forced to stay with her after his bank account is drained when he becomes victim to identity theft, but finds a paid offer to playtest a game for SaitoGemu.
At the company's building, he is met by Katie (Wunmi Mosaku) in an experiment room. Though she turns his phone off, he turns it back on to surreptitiously take pictures of the test kit for Sonja. Katie implants a small device called a "mushroom" in the back of his neck. He tests an augmented reality version of the game Whac-A-Mole. Cooper is impressed and agrees to a further test. He meets with Shou (Ken Yamamura), the company's owner, and is told that he will experience a horror game where an artificial neural network personalises the experience to his fears.
At Harlech House, the mansion he recognises from a SaitoGemu game, Cooper has an earpiece to communicate with Katie; there are also cameras throughout. After a while, he sees a spider and then a figure appearing in a painting. He hears footsteps and sees a simulation of Josh Peters (Jamie Paul), his childhood bully. In the kitchen, an enormous spider with Peters' face appears. Cooper's earpiece then ceases to work. Sonja arrives and urges Cooper to leave, but Cooper finds inconsistencies in her story. She stabs him and they fight. As her face inverts to a red skull, Cooper impales her on the knife lodged through his shoulder, and she, the knife, and Cooper's injury disappear.
As earpiece communication resumes, Katie leads Cooper to an upstairs room to terminate the test. Katie begins interrogating Cooper as he forgets details about his mother and then himself. After attempting to remove the mushroom with a shard of glass, Katie and Shou burst in and restrain him, saying that the technology has advanced too far to be removed.
Cooper awakens in Shou's office, the experiment having lasted only a single second and nothing subsequent having been real. Cooper returns home to find his mother (Elizabeth Moynihan), who does not recognise him, dialling his number repeatedly. Back in the first experiment room, Cooper yells for his mother as the mushroom kills him. Cooper was in fact killed within 0.04 seconds by a phone call from his mother causing signal interference with the device, the subsequent experience existing only in his head.
Production
Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, in September 2015 Netflix commissioned the series for twelve episodes (split into two series of six episodes). In March 2016, Netflix outbid Channel 4 for the rights to distributing the third series, with an offer of $40 million. Due to its move to Netflix, the show had a larger budget than in previous series. "Playtest" is the second episode of the third series; all six episodes in the series were released on Netflix simultaneously on 21 October 2016. As Black Mirror is an anthology series, each installment is standalone. "Playtest" was placed second partly because Halloween was soon after the release date, though series creator Charlie Brooker commented that maybe it should not have been second as it is a "romp" rather than a "message episode".