Oats Studios

For being an independent studio the quality of CGI/animation is actually decent. It didn't make me cringe looking at it. The acting was good. It had a few famous people, but for the most part unknown actors. Some stories were moronic and tried to hard, others were solid story telling with inconclusive endings. All in all, this felt like a wannabe Black Mirror and Love, Death & Robots mash up.

Usually, with a collection show like this, I'd review each one individually, but this odd collection, from Neill Blomkamp's independent studio is too esoteric and, in most cases, short to justify that sort of approach. So I'll review them as one.

"Oats Studio" as titled on Netflix is a series of short films, some live action, some high-level CGI creations. Though there is generally little in terms of through story in most of the episodes, general themes, such as post-apocalyptic worlds, robotic uprisings and science fiction horror settings.

Truth be told, you're not really meant to consume these shorts as you might a similar compendium such as "Love, Death and Robots". Those are a series of short stories, whereas the films featured here are generally much closer to tech demos or proof of concepts - that would be shown to gauge interest in further development. Some of the ideas are indeed reasonably interesting and I might be interested if they were developed further - through truth be told, most of them feel like ideas that have been explored before. The worst ones were, for me, the ones that attempted to be comedies. The "Bad President" and the "Cooking with Bill" episodes were a major waste of time for all involved. Two other largely live action ones, "Rakka" starring Sigourney Weaver and "Zygote" starring Dakota Fanning were much better - though, for me, it's the one series that produced two episodes, the CGI series "Adam" that held the most potential.

I mean, given that you can probably burn through the whole series is about an hour, and from that something is likely to peak your interest a bit, maybe you should give it a try - just don't expect much pay off from the good ones, or that any of it will live long in the memory.

All of these short films have amazing visuals, great directing and acting. Some of these story ideas are indeed likely to be similar to something you have already seen in other movies or series, but it still manages to take a new approach on a lot of these themes and subjects.

What people don't understand is that this isn't a series... These are experimental shortfilms independant from each other and that are meant (as often done in cinema, and as for example James Wan did with Saw) to gather feedback and eventually producers to make the most appreciated ones into full length movies. I can understand why people watching this on Netflix are angry about it, since they are expecting a show / series, and these informations should definitely be written in the description on Netflix in order to prevent confusing people who will not take the time to look up what this really is.

So yes, these aren't whole stories, but more glimpses, visuals and presentations of the different universes and characters that could be involved in these, if they were made in full length movies.

Now that you are advised, watch and enjoy or just pass on it if you don't care about this type of stuff and would rather watch a full length movie or series ;)

First of all, almost all episodes are inconclusive, and that was the point, to raise funds to develop them, and that's ok. It has some good stuff in it, Firebase is really good, I wish I could see the ending of that. Same with Rakka. There are some good ideas. Zygote and Gdansk are interesting.

For me all the "funny" episodes failed completely, I guess that's not my kind of humor. AT ALL. It's too repetitive and sometimes naive/pointless. For instance, the cooking show, I saw the first two gizmos, and I think I skipped the last ones to the next episode, they were all too obvious and repetitive and not really funny, just parodying something won't make it automatically hilarious. Same with the president one, too far fetch (though extravagant presidents exist of course, like that crazy Thailand dude), Kapture and God, they made no sense and they were too obvious at the same time. And again, for me, they're not even funny to justify them.

There are some things that didn't make sense, like why are people in Kapture filming for VHS? I guess it's just for the "feeling" of a shaky cam/low quality video? Makes no sense when they're using drones, and mind control they don't have a decent camera? Also, if you want to make humor episodes, you need to hire a good comedy writer. There's a lot to learn from Love, Death & Robots about how to make comedy shorts.

Again, I don't want to be harsh, the "serious" chapters had something redeemable about them, but the funny ones are plain bad.

I believe the point of all these "short films" were to pique interest and money for future productions - while the style and unfinished feel of these shorts may not suit everyone's tastes, many have incredibly unique and thought-provoking premise, effects, and storylines that could be developed into full features (particularly Rakka, Firebase, Zygote & ADAM).

If you go in expecting to find resolution and fully molded stories this may not be for you. On the other hand, if you want to be entertained and view some beautifully crafted worlds in various mind-stretching scenarios; give it a shot. Hopefully we'll be able to see a continuation of some of these episodes in either short sequels or full length stories in the future.