Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios short films are now available on Netflix. It features Sigourney Weaver, Carly Pope, Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Kellan Lutz, Michael Rogers, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and Dakota Fanning. The series has 10 shorts that will definitely blow away your minds.
The synopsis reads – Director Neill Blomkamp produces a series of experimental short films that envision post-apocalyptic worlds and nightmarish scenarios.
Oats Studios Review Does Not Contain Spoilers
These are the titles of the shorts in Oats Studios – Volume 1 – Rakka, Firebase, Cooking With Bill, God, Zygote, Bad President, Adam (Episode 2 and 3), Gdansk and Kapture: Locust. The duration of these shorts is between 5 minutes to 25 minutes.
In Neill Blomkamp’s perception of post-apocalyptic worlds, humans are suffering. Aliens rule us, we struggle to breathe, and the dead from the war haunt us. Neill has shown us how the apocalypse would look like in every era of humanity’s existence. It’s a very disturbing picture.
I know that it’s a 2017 creation, but I would still mention how much it reminded me of Love, Death and Robots and Black Mirror. But the violence, gore and brutality in Blomkamp’s stories are in abundance. The most uncomfortable episode to sit through was Cooking With Bill, and the one that’s going to haunt me for quite some time is ‘God: Serengeti/Chicago’.
At this point, aliens don’t scare me because an invisible virus ruined our life from 2020. We are still living that nightmare, so what worse can aliens do to us? But the ending of episode God depicts how we are mere pieces being played by something beyond our reach. It made me think of the pandemic situation instantly.
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Still from the trailer 
Still from the trailer
The stories are intriguing, but none of them have a definitive ending. Love, Death + Robots offered us conclusions, even if they were terrifying. But that’s not what we see in Oats Studios. It’s not fair to leave us hanging after we’ve invested time watching those distressing tales. However, the performances and animations are excellent. The tension you sense in the screen is sensed in you too. That’s how well it’s made.
Netflix’s Oats Studios Volume 1 Review: Final Thoughts
Overall, it’s a series of unfortunate and uncomfortable events. Even horror fans would flinch a bit while watching an episode or two. But it’s a perfect Halloween treat if you are okay with gruesome and ghastly visuals. The horror fan in me is pleased to start October with something horrifying like this!
Oats Studios is now streaming on Netflix.
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The aliens doing stuff to humans like being cruel to humans and animals, destroying the environment for selfish needs, creating breeding grounds, etc… Literally everything on that list is actually done by humans in this day.we are unnecessarily cruel to animals and treat them and environment same way for selfish needs. It’s such hypocrisy to say aliens are bad.
I agree with your point. Humans assume anyone other than them only have harmful intentions.
JSOC didn’t exist in 1970. In fact, JSOC was not founded until ten years later, in 1980. Pretty basic. The writers of Firebase should have been more careful.
I hate when they get sci-fi wrong.
Very few get them right.
Sorry….I didn’t like it at all….to dense and boring…I watched 2 episodes and couldn’t carry on
I can understand. It’s too dense at times and not everyone’s kind of content.
I was disappointed because I thought it was solely about the invading aliens trying to exterminate us as was shown in the trailers, instead it went all over the place. Never would have watched it if I had known. When it switched gears and started dumping out the short stories with the 80’s style buffoon and his failed kitchen gadgets and God messing with cave men I shut it off.
The failed kitchen gadget episode is a nightmare.
I think that might be the point of the show? Like a modern War of the Worlds, a look at what humans do through the separation of fiction. While WotW was written as a critique of colonization, having it turned on people, this one is about environmentalism? Kinda his whole shtick as a director and writer since District 9.
I would say that the first episode entitled “Rakka” was interesting though quirky was not bad, but the rest of the series took a complete off a 500-foot cliff to its death. The series is a horror show it that it is unwatchable and horrible to try to watch. This is not good entertainment. The material is poorly written and should have never been given a greenlight to produce. Netflix should be ashamed of wasting money on this crap. Obviously the producer was given the go-ahead strictly because he was obviously lucky to have ever won an Oscar.
Any awards or accolades from prior work did not show up in this series, it is unwatchable drivel.
Thanks for sharing your views. For me, the most disturbing episode was the cooking show. The rest was fine, didn’t bother me.
Overhyped, unsatisfying, and undeserving of the efforts of some skilled actors. The lack of resolution hints at a continuation, but the few stories that were worthy of the genre were far from worthy of any sequel. One is left with the impression of middle school drama class writhing supported by run of the mill CG effects.
We don’t know if there’s any continuation. It would be a disappointment if there’s none.
So true.
Like almost every other horror/slasher/alien gorefest produced these days; this, like the rest, seems as though the writers got to the end and walked away from the table without finishing the story. Annoys me to no end. You don’t tell a joke without a punchline, you don’t play a game without determining a winner or loser, so don’t write movies and TV without having an ending. Imagine Disney back in the day producing Sleeping Beauty and rolling the credits when she passes out from the apple…the movie would have bombed and not become the classic it is.
Totally. Ending stories with no conclusion is annoying.
Who cares we’ll all be long dead in the blink of a eye. Hug your love ones tell them you love them. There’s no dress rehearsal ????⏳
True ????
Exactly what I though, too. Brilliant special effects and interesting storylines to start with, but almost every episode just ends abruptly, where it should take off. Very unsatisfying.
I know, right? If there’s no part two, there are no answers 🙁
You are all aware that was the whole point, right? Their goal was to release short, unfinished films, to see which ones would engage audiences the most, for potential full-length feature films.
I hope they make the films. Otherwise these are incomplete shorts
To concur what Groovyeye mentioned. You should research a bit more about oats studios. It’s a testing grounds for potential fill feature films. These are not meant to be finished shorts. Just proposals. In fact they are all available on YouTube for some time. If you like the concept of one of the proposals, you can buy the DLC which will fund finishing off the full fledged piece.
It’s genuinely a great project and should be supported.