LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS REVIEW: An animated f-fest of everything that is sci-fi horror, fantasy added w

Love, Death & Robots is a collection of animated short stories that span the science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy genres. With a bold approach to each story’s narrative, episodes are intended to be easy to watch and hard to forget.

As Culturedemandsgeeks sits on the comfy couch, a downpour of rain cascading on the outside world; It has come to our attention that we haven’t had something as decidedly adult in the world of animation?

ABOVE: David Fincher, Jennifer Miller & Tim Miller, Executive Producers SXSW Film Festival. Austin, TX

Then pops up, the anthology show, Love, Death, and Robots. Created by DEADPOOL director Tim Miller and produced by David Fincher, this anthology of 18 short films comes from a diverse group of filmmakers and animation studios who live up to the titular inclusion of romance, murder, and artificial life.

Cartoons containing adult content have been around for a long time, but Tim Miller and David Fincher anthology show for adults brings greatness in storytelling to a whole new realm…

With episodes clocking in at no more than thirty minutes and some less than ten, this is a quick and easy binge of diverse stories and styles that will keep even the shortest attention span engaged this weekend. Plus, it also highlights the next generation of filmmakers and storytellers who may not have gotten as wide of exposure as Netflix can possibly offer.

Thank you, Netflix. You guys did it again.

Fincher created the TV series Mindhunter and directed the movies Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl while Miller worked on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and directed Deadpool. So these filmmakers are no strangers to dark, twisted, and irreverent stories.

With a varied mix of styles that echo the best AAA video games to classic Japanese anime, cel-drawn animation to big-budget CGI, this anthology has it all while never sticking with a single definition for what genre it is covering. There are also a lot of images of genitalia which animators have gotten really good at replicating.

Some episodes, like “Sonnie’s Edge” are played like cut-scenes from the newest Playstation or Xbox games, but have a full storyline based on published short stories. Others, like the standout “Alternate Histories”, go for a less realistic look. But what is the same for each story are the buckets of blood, sex, swearing to the hilt and gore which you would never get to see in a live action film (maybe Polaris, though!)

Still, this series has moments where I could not tell if it was actors in motion-capture suits or fully created by animators from scratch.

ABOVE: THE WITNESS

Consider “The Witness.” Its story is very simple: A woman spots her neighbor across the street brutally attacking and killing a woman. She panics, runs, and he follows her. The whole short is a chase, and the ending is expected but works well enough. What’s in between looks great — little words like “bam!” and “crash!” highlight the pursuit to comic attitude silliness, while lines of objects and buildings shift every so often to hint that all might not be what it seems. This woman is an exotic dancer at a strange club filled with leather-clad dominatrixes and a couch that functions as a stripper pole. When she runs from home, she goes to work, and her manager scolds her into performing even though she’s on the run from a murderer. She then goes through her whole routine before the chase can start over again, and finishes the last half of the episode in an open bathrobe, the ending is really great, a twisty disturbing and ultimately surreal piece of story-telling.

But, as impressive as the boundary-pushing technologies employed in CGI can be, we found ourselves enjoying the hand-drawn episodes a lot more. An example is the excellent “Sucker of Souls” which gives us a nice twist on a vampire tale replete with witty one-liners and lots of humor.

Warning, this series, it is that some episodes seem to heap on the nudity and violence just for the sake of doing so. Like the aforementioned videogame cutscenes, these episodes tend to blend together. So… the series is deffo not for young kids.

Still, while we have no problem with blood and boobs, you can immediately spot the productions that relied on those elements more heavily than others. Still, there are some other high points: “When the Yogurt Took Over” is cute in tone, concept, and style; “Fish Night” uses rotoscoping to stimulating effect, and “Three Robots” earns big points for incorporating cats and a fun sense of ‘the end of the world’ being viewed as a tour by three different robots.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

As a celebration of animation’s potential, the series works to the extent that many of these miniature creations are given maximum viewpoints; rich with textures, details, and savvy techniques, most of the episodes will give you more than a few aesthetics to admire at once.

While Miller and Fincher’s involvement is not in a director capacity, the styles they employ in their films comes through loud and clear. In a series that echoes the works of The Wachowskis, George Miller, David Lynch, David Cronenberg as well as Fincher himself, there is a lot of expectation and this series achieves that. If Culturedemandsgeeks could give this show more than our five stars, we surely would, but unfortunately, we can’t, (so there!)

5/5 STARS