AI tries to kill Issa Rae in latest ‘Black Mirror’ Trailer
The show's latest preview offers a glimpse into each of its six episodes, some of which continue storylines from previous seasons of the popular dystopian Netflix series
By Larisha Paul
One of the first lines of dialogue in the episode title-revealing trailer for Black Mirror Season Seven is laughably on-the-nose: “Don’t freak out.” What follows in the two minutes after this instruction is a montage of the type of dystopian nightmare scenarios the Netflix series is known for, only with an added dash of realism ahead of the six-episode season premiere scheduled for April 10.
In the episode “Hotel Reverie,” Issa Rae stars as the Hollywood A-lister Brandy Friday. Brandy signs onto a film project in which a high-tech system called ReDream will be used to remake an old British film. But once hooked up to the program, the actress finds herself trapped in a different dimension where her AI co-stars believe they’re as real as she is and attempt to prove it by strangling her on top of a high-rise. The episode, which also features Emma Corrin, Awkwafina, and Harriet Walter, will clock in at one hour and 16 minutes with direction from Haolu Wang and writing from Charlie Brooker.
In another, “Common People,” Rashida Jones plays a woman named Amanda, who finds out the price of living when her husband (Chris O’Dowd) tries to save her life with a high-tech system that turns her into a functional billboard. “You’re running ads through me?” she asks in one scene, before blurting out a second later: “Have you tried Espresso Grande? The beans are roasted slow and long for a richer, smoother taste.” Tracee Ellis Ross also appears in the hour-long episode directed by Ally Pankiw and written by Brooker based on a story from himself and Bisha K. Ali.
“It’s back to basics in many ways. They’re all sci-fi stories — there’s definitely some horrifying things that occur, but maybe not in an overt horror-movie way. There’s definitely some disturbing content in it,” Brooker told Netflix TUDUM. “We’ve got six episodes this time, and two of them are basically feature-length. Some of them are deeply unpleasant, some are quite funny, and some are emotional.”
Other episodes dig into the dangers of loneliness and isolation. In the Paul Giamatti-led “Eulogy,” an old man finds his way to the past through a new system that allows him to physically step inside old photos. “She’s in there, but I can’t see her,” he says sadly. Siena Kelly feels similarly alone in “Bête Noire,” isolated by paranoia and gaslighting more so than actual solitude. The episode follows her character Maria as she tries to figure out why her old classmate and new coworker Verity (Rosy McEwen) seems so bizarre to only her.
The remaining two episodes are tech scares. “Plaything” merges murder and an unsuspecting cozy game and sees the return of Will Poulter. Meanwhile, “USS Callister: Into Infinity” finds the crew of the USS Callister from the Season Four episode “USS Callister” stranded in virtual space where they’ll face off against 30 million players. It’s the longest episode of the batch, coming in at just under an hour and a half.
“Fans of the show will recognize the cast of a certain spaceship from one of our episodes reappearing,” Brooker said. “We’ve done a sequel for the first time in Black Mirror history. Normally, I kill off all the characters at the end of an episode, [but] I kept some of ’em alive. I’m growing as a human.”