Created by Charlie Brooker and broadcasted on Channel 4 before appearing as a Netflix staple, Black Mirror is one of the 21st century’s most popular and dissected series. Following an anthology structure with individual stories in each episode, it debuted in 2011 with one of the most disturbing, and later strangely realistic, pilots seen on TV and has only increased the reins since. Black Mirror is characterised and recognised for its dystopian settings, unsettling atmosphere, stark visuals and critical contextual intention. Through plots originally primarily written by Brooker himself and its characterisation, the series aims to expose the dangers of excessive technology on society and the human condition through thrilling narratives for entertainment value.
The social issues Black Mirror comments on through a symbolic display of futuristic designed media and technology that reflect contemporary uses involve family relations, morality, mental health, addiction and many others that audiences resonate with or learn from. The award-winning show features commentary-based ideas that are beginning to ring true in our current climate that values advanced technology: motion capture technology, social capital as orchestrated through social media and online appearance, memory being captured and presented through technology, televised acts of brutality that attract a morally bankrupt example of voyeurism and parts of deceased people being partially resurrected through AI.
From this Black Mirror has cemented its own artistic and thematic identity in our media field. This image easily extends into cinematic features classified under the science-fiction, psychological, dystopian and fantasy genres. These films then use a techno-driven visual design and storytelling that features morally questionable acts or characters working under a world that emphasises the use of technology in all walks of life to carry out the same critical mission Brooker’s series is adored for.
Many filmmakers have achieved the same atmosphere and vision the British series has. Based on similar themes, narratives and visuals, here are ten films that could easily fit into the Black Mirror universe of a bleak society that is a slave to technology that develops faster than the morality of the humans who use it.
Ten Movies That Would Fit Into The Black Mirror Universe
Possessor (Brandon Cronenberg, 2020)
The son of David Cronenberg followed in his father’s footsteps with this 2020 sci-fi thriller Possesor which features some creative psychology. Thanks to an advanced brain implant device, an assassin working for the elite (Andrea Risenborough) takes power in other people’s bodies to carry out her executions. One assignment takes her to a whole new level where she finds herself in conflict with the person whose mind she has hijacked as they aim to take her down.
Brandon Cronenberg’s second feature following 2012’s Antiviral also features Christopher Abbott, with Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It upholds Black Mirror’s thematic and conceptual manifesto through its provocative vision of dystopian technology being recruited to control and monitor an unsuspecting party’s psyche. The Candian filmmaker showcases a unique exploration of human consciousness and morality as he examines the ethics of recruiting unrelated individuals as pawns in an assassination; the element of psychological technology only elevates the material. Possessor is a thrill ride communicated through a heightened visual composition and some immersive world-building to complement its values of humanity.
Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
Hailed as one of modern horror’s greatest and one of the most impressive debuts of all time, comedian-turned-horror-maestro Jordan Peele’s 2020 masterpiece Get Out stars Daniel Kaluuya as an American black man travelling with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to meet her progressive and heavily liberal family. After an initially off-putting welcome of virtue signalling and emphasis on his race, Kaluuya’s character is shocked to discover the family engages in the practice of brain transplantation, whereby individuals’ brains are transplanted into the bodies of others, thereby endowing them with desired physical attributes and a distorted version of eternal life.
Peele’s award-winning psychologically charged feature achieved the esteemed distinction of being named the greatest screenplay of the 21st century by the Writers Guild of America. Get Out displays some captivating storytelling that enables viewers to engage cognitively as a way to comprehend the profound narrative examining social politics and humanity. Additionally, the brilliance of the writing and direction allows for repeated viewings, each time revealing new insights conveyed through performances, dialogue, or visuals. Both of these features echo Black Mirror’s writing and aftermath with fans re-watching episodes to find another piece of the puzzle to the episode and sometimes the series as a whole. Brimming with coded symbols that Peele didn’t even realise Get Out conveys Black Mirror’s love for psychology as a tool to embody critical social-political context.
eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999)
This 1999 sci-fi and horror mix-up, directed by visionary and conceptual visual artist David Cronenberg, centres on a groundbreaking game designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who uses a new device called ‘game pods’ which fit onto players’s bodies fall victim to a group of merciless assassins during a play of her new virtual reality game. Luckily she is playing with a publicist (Jude Law) and the two battle against death with each level of the game.
Cronenberg’s feature is a thorough and thrilling experience, channelling body horror, psychology and a dystopian sense. eXistenZ builds on a story surrounded by a dreamlike and surreal landscape with its thematic concepts involving such hands-on gaming proposes virtual reality and advanced technology are a hidden drug that restrains human understanding of their selves and environment. The film’s narrative structure violates boundaries between reality and illusion as audiences, as well as the two protagonists, struggle to decipher what are game levels or events and what is true life as they tumble deeper into the game lore. This very appeal is what aligns eXistenZ with Netflix’s Black Mirror, with realism being interrogated by a manmade virtual stimulation gone wrong being present in several infamous episodes.
Nerve (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, 2016)
Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s 2016 adaptation of Jeanne Ryan’s 2012 prose of the same title features Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, and Juliette Lewis as players in a more extreme rendition of Truth or Dare. The game takes place, as on par with contemporary societal critiques, online and players are coerced to perform a dare more dangerous than the last in front of an audience behind screens. Roberts’s Vee agrees to take part in the games, unsuspecting of what moral depravity awaits her.
The visual re-imagination of Nerve recruits a techno visual arrangement of neon lights and fast-paced editing to showcase its examination of underlying social media hazards. With voyeurism and ethics embedded into its plot, Joost and Schulman’s feature mirrors the writing of Black Mirror in quite literally holding a mirror up to its audiences of screen-obsessed slaves searching for extreme entertainment no matter the cost, of mostly others. It studies the idea of how far can one be pushed to become number one, even if it’s the winning spot in an online circus disguised as a challenging sport.
Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
Another Cronenberg classic is Videodrome, his eighth directorial feature released in 1983 and starring James Wood as a small-town television station CEO who accidentally discovers a broadcast of snuff films. From this startling find, the CEO becomes wrapped in a multifaceted and faux world of mind control, conspiracy and exploitation through technological means.
Videodrome is a staple work in cinema’s everlasting critique of excessive technological dependency and neglect of truth, accentuated by its thrilling narrative and sharp visual composition. Cronenberg’s film demonstrates how technological progress can read as a cause-and-effect path to societal decay and psychological corrosion. Its thematic outline highlights how our reality can intrigue us only when we’ve designed manners to tamper with it, in turn infiltrating our own consciousness and moral compass. The politics are heightened by the disturbing display of body horror as provided by brilliant special effects provided by Academy Award winner Rick Baker, treading this thought-provoking techno-thriller into classic 1980s horror territory. The use of horror visuals can steer Videodrome far from Black Mirror’s manifesto but the conceptual messaging of the battle that arises between humankind and technology offers a firm red thread.
Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond, 2021)
Prano Bailey-Bond’s 2021 psychological horror Censor stars Niamh Algar as an employee at the British Board of Film Classification working against the heated issue of Video Nasty’s threat and censorship in the 1980s. After censoring one tape of footage, Algar’s character becomes convinced the star actress is her sister who went missing years before and so sets out to track her down, no matter the consequences.
A fitting watch for film history buffs and anyone who has a taste for vaporwave visuals and gritty narratives, Censor combines cinematic debate, the psychological element of memories and a smaller blend of horror and drama to portray the morality and code of film censors. It borrows ideas from the VHS/analogue horror era in constructing its own visual and thematic identity, incorporating unsettling images and sequences to align with its contextual landscape. Its British setting echoes the early and classic days of Black Mirror, the ones that emphasised British responses to and ideas of an overdependency of technology that is utilised to execute a lack of morals.
Cam (Daniel Goldhaber, 2018)
Daniel Goldhaber’s 2018 directorial debut Cam, written by Isa Mazzei in her screenwriting debut, focuses on a camgirl called Alice, played by Madeline Brewer, who is disturbed to find out a doppelgänger has hijacked her account and is stealing her paying clients through some disturbing sexual acts. Her mission to track and take down the culprit unlocks some unnerving secrets about the camming world, involving both its workers and audiences.
Goldhaber oversees an effective atmosphere and believable performances in Cam. The film harmonises the universal fear of doppelgänger that all human psychology relates to with a PSA on the danger of the dark web, mostly in exploitative online sex work. This showcases a phobia from the past gelling with a more contemporary one since anxiety about the downsides to technology occupying such a large space of our lives, such as careers, has been growing since 1998’s Ringu. Cam builds off this developing fear by occupying a gendered lens of women in sex work and the threats they are exposed to in the online world, demonstrating some Black Mirror edge with its feminist interpretation.
Choose or Die (Toby Meakins, 2022)
Starring Lola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Robert Englund and Eddie Marsan, Choose or Die is Toby Meakins’s 2022 directorial feature debut that premiered on Netflix to join with its other contemporary societal and techo examinations. Its plot centres on a financially struggling student who finds herself caught up in an eccentric survival computer game with origins in the 1980s as the winner earns a cash prize of $100,000. However, the player has no idea that once the game shatters her understanding of what is illusion and what is her real life she will be playing for a prize worth more than any amount of cash: her very life.
Surviving more on appeal of concept and a talented cast rather than thorough overall quality, Choose or Die ties in with Black Mirror’s thematic identity swiftly with its presentation of an online game that tricks des[erate searching players into competing for their lives. This logline hopes to examine human desperation alongside the re-prioritisation of ethics and social norms as corresponding to this desperation and the backdrop of advanced technology that compromises reality and illusion is the perfect place to do so. Choose or Die pushes the pedal on the gore factor and lets go of suspense in the process; the opposite of Black Mirror’s direction. However, one can still draw sustainable parallels in subject matter and characterisation.
Circle (Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione, 2015)
Circle is Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione’s 2015 sci-fi and psychological hybrid that features an ensemble cast of 50 unsuspecting and unconsenting players in a game of life or death in which one of them is killed every two minutes. The only way to win and stop the random deaths is to select one person to be killed, with values, morals and past actions serving as the deciding factor. Carter Jenkins, Lawrence Kao, Allegra Masters, Michael Nardelli, Julie Benz, Mercy Malick, Lisa Pelikan, and Cesar Garcia appear as some of the players in this thrilling and disturbing underrated feature.
A choke hazard of a film due to its intensity and disturbing exposure of humanity’s hidden evils, Circle is difficult to get through but is a brilliant watch for those who are attracted to dystopian and psychological works. Hann and Miscione’s feature drowns audiences in philosophical questions about human nature and humanity, prompting viewers to ask themselves a series of heavy-handed debate topics. Who decides what is moral or immoral? Should people be given a second chance? Is death an appropriate punishment? How far is too far when trying to survive? Black Mirror may not deliver so upfrontly on the philosophical lens, instead choosing a more covert route that requires several re-watches. It does occasionally showcase Circle’s fascination with everyday members of the public being pulled into a web of hysteria and moral panic, forcing their hand to make the impossible choice with some finding it easier than others. The advanced technological design of the challenge, controlled by an unseen and out-of-this-world force, only adds to the Black-Mirror-coded atmosphere of this chilling thriller.
Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023)
Brandon Cronenberg once again showcased his artistry with Infinity Pool, the 2023 sci-fi horror also written by Cronenberg and starring rising alternative star Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård. During a much-needed vacation where he becomes acquainted with an eccentric fan and her partner, a struggling writer runs down a resident and pays the country’s idea of a penalty: being executed by the victim’s family member in front of an audience. However, he soon finds out the ‘him’ who has to face law and order can be a clone and his new friends are more than familiar with the whole process. From this, the writer is seduced into an underground culture of playing God, breaking the law, unconventional sexuality and experimentation with bodily autonomy and societal customs.
Infinity Pool is a storm surge of drugs, crime, sex and violations. It’s a visceral perversion of character and justice, utilising ideas of advanced science being used for selfish means as an effective tool for highlighting a jeopardised human experience. Cronenberg’s direction of such subject matter is unapologetic, which only adds to the cinematic temperament. The film’s mood wants nothing to do with lightheartedness or comfort, instead choosing to unnerve viewers through threaded sequences such as violently depicted orgies, gruesome home invasions and executions of justice. These events are complemented by an avant-garde tonal and visual design as evident in costumes, editing and camera work. As the narrative progresses, this eccentricity sours into a hopeless and wretched fight for life. Black Mirror also immerses itself in testing audiences through a hopeless atmosphere following an apparent and faux high note, conveying the harsh realities of life in which it plays a horrible trick on us. There is also the previously mentioned exploitation of scientific methods, one that places any person in the position of God, manipulating life and its inhabitants and echoing Black Mirror’s exploration of the dark side of technology.