Black Mirror: 10 Character Fates Worse Than Death
4. Black Museum - Executions For Amusement
Nish (Letitia Wright) is the bewildered audience proxy as she wanders through the titular museum and gets taken on a tour by Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). When we get to the third and final story of this anthology within an anthology, the pieces come together and we learn of the revenge-style reasons for Nish "stumbling" upon the museum.
The subject of the third attraction is Clayton Leigh; a convicted criminal on death row with conflicting evidence against himself. Told in flashbacks, we watch as Clayton is manipulated into selling his consciousness over to Rolo and made into a freethinking, feeling and emotional hologram of himself.
As part of the attraction to the museum, attendees can pull a lever and repeatedly "execute" Rolo Haynes over and over again - something that wasn't part of Clayton's original deal with Rolo.
Before we think "well it's just a hologram!", the tired and pleading face of Clayton Leigh tells us and the museum guests that this isn't the hologram's first rodeo, and that he remembers every time a giggling spectator has flipped the switch. Over the years, amusement has dwindled into sickening thrills - made all the more horrible by the fact that attendees can take a token souvenir of their execution.
Clayton's hologram has been tortured into a former husk of himself, and while Rolo does get his comeuppance in the end, the thought of being tortured to death, but never actually dying reeks of the malice that has followed too many Black Mirror characters.