New shows arrive on Netflix seemingly every day, so it takes a lot for one to actually capture our attention, but when we caught the trailer for Flinch over the weekend, we really snapped to it, in a ‘what the everloving fuck is going on here?’ kind of way.
We looked into it, and each episode of the show features eight contestants who are taken to a farm in northern Ireland and put through a variety of harsh physical challenges, then punished by electric shocks, dunking in cold water or a cattle prod if they flinch.
A recent teaser for the show, appearing on Facebook, features a terrifying child winding up a jack-in-the-box, and a set of jumper cables hooked up to zap startled contestants. Gaze upon it and weep for the Black Mirror–like hellscape that humanity has become.
There’s an added twist in that each of the hosts – Seann Walsh, Desiree Burch and Lloyd Griffith – picks a contestant before each round, and if their contestant flinches the most while being tortured, then they are also tortured, in something called a ‘Flinch Forfeit’. Seems fair, I guess.
Reactions to the trailer on Facebook range from “You canceled Santa Clarita Diet for this?” to “This doesn’t look like Santa Clarita Diet” to “Just give us season 4 of Santa Clarita Diet“. We’re sensing a bit of a theme there.
Flinch is streaming now, if you’re game.
