Love, Death & Robots (2019) – Review

Although a load of new content appears on Netflix every week, I generally take the time to watch what interests me. I add it to my viewing list when it is announced and I often see it a few weeks after it has been released. However, last week was a week in which I could not wait until the releases of Triple Frontier (review will follow), season 2 of The OA and this series, Love, Death & Robots. With Tim Miller (director of Deadpool) and David Fincher as executive producers and a science fiction approach, I was very curious. I had not seen the trailer and I was totally unprepared for what I would experience, but when I started watching, I couldn’t get enough of it.

It is a series that is difficult to describe in one sentence. It consists of 18 separate short animated films of various lengths (approximately between eight and twenty minutes), each with a different animation style, subject and feel. Although it is animation, it is not a series that is suitable for young viewers. There is an extreme amount of violence, nudity and other extreme things that you wouldn’t want your children exposed to. Perhaps it is best to compare it with a series such as Black Mirror, because the stories sometimes have a dark twist at the end.

The variation between episodes is enormous and dark violent episodes are occasionally alternated with humorous ones. Last year, many reviewers (including myself) were stunned by Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, because it was so different from what is normally is shown in the cinemas in terms of animation. Love, Death & Robots, however, shows how wide animation is and what you as a cinema visitor are normally not exposed to. There are a number of shorts here that are visually very impressive. However, that does not mean that the “uncanny valley” has already disappeared. With the shorts that go for realistic characters, most of them still miss that feeling of being alive in their eyes or emoting as you and I would do, the stories do make up for it though.

 The quality of the series is high, and of course there are always episodes that are more appealing than others. My personal favorites are:
– Three Robots, in which three different robots are tourists in a post-apocalyptic city
– When the yogurt took over, which makes the concept of that title credible
– Beyond the Aquila Rift, because of the concept and in which a number of human characters are very close to realistic
– Zima Blue, about an artist and what drives him to make his blue squares
– The Witness, because of its visual style
– Alternate Histories, an app that runs through a number of bizarre, alternative historical scenarios

If you are open to another visual experience and can stand violence, then this is a Netflix series that is really worth watching. Because of the short length of each “episode” and the individual stories, it will never take long before you are immersed in something else, should there be one that does not suit your taste. I couldn’t stop watching myself.
[score9]