Black Museum (S04E06)

Three stories in one, or an anthology within an anthology. The curator of a museum of criminal curiosities (the artefacts are Easter eggs from some of the previous episodes) is guiding a lonely visitor, telling her the stories behind the exhibits. A genre stew that combines horror, comedy, drama, revenge film, grotesque, romance and I don’t know what else. I won’t lie, it didn’t leave me with a very coherent impression. The individual stories are all pretty good and keep their heads above the water of interesting ideas. Unfortunately, IMHO, what they all have in common is that they would’ve been better if each of them had their own dedicated episode. It ends up being meh! It’s impossible to get acquainted with the characters, which prevents the possibility of a real experience from their sad or scary fates. And, at least in the first and second story, the voiceover of the narrator really pulled me out of the plot. (29/12/2017)

Famous classic horror stories Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw as a basis for the concept so far the most “like The Twilight Zone" episode. If, as a film maker, you want to deliberately make a self-parody episode where you take all the trademarks of your season to ad absurdum level, then you must already be a damn good screenwriter with a considerable degree of self-reflection. Perhaps only X-Files were good at it repeatedly at that time. The Black Museum is “conscious self-parody-unwanted ridiculousness" that does not always a good balance during the long footage, but for sure doesn´t not fall into category of ridiculousness, not a single time. Which is good. Otherwise, as in the case of White Christmas, there are too many disparate motives glued together. And although the final kind of “fateful" connecting element works, but not enough to shake this feeling. Nevertheless, a decent pulp-entertaining short story about many micro-stories, which holds together mainly thanks to the charismatic and slimy Douglas Hodge. (07/01/2019)

A short story composed of small stories. Black Mirror on the one hand makes fun of itself, on the other hand it tries to be its most sophisticated in the fourth season. It does the former well, the latter a little weaker, but the atmosphere is suitably thick and Douglas Hodge so loathsome that four stars would be an understatement. (11/06/2023)