Streaming services have yet to completely embrace the potential for short films, but season three of Netflix’s Love, Death and Robots continues to fly the flag for quality short animation. With episodes of between five and twenty-five minutes in length, each one is in easily digestible chunks, but their impact makes them much more than just something to put on when you’ve got a spare few minutes of downtime. As with the last two seasons, these episodes span sci-fi, horror, comedy and drama, giving you something different with each watch.
What’s also good about the short film format is it’s able to showcase different artistic styles. Where the second season a little disappointingly seemed to be made up of almost all realistic CGI animation, this series spreads its wings a bit more. Night of the Mini Dead has a tilt-shift style for a fun zombie apocalypse, while The Very Pulse of the Machine uses vibrant colours in a more hand-drawn animation style for a trippy, beautiful story.
There isn’t a wasted episode in Season Three. Though some are a bit lighter and more purely for entertainment (like the over the top gore and action of Kill Team Kill, and the fun armed rats versus killer robots in Mason’s Rats) some transcend the light bite feel of the short format. Swarm takes a fascinating central idea and creates a disturbing ending with some horrific body horror imagery, while the standout episode Jibaro is beautiful and mesmerising, combining great sound design and frenetic camerawork with contemporary dance to create something affecting and completely different.
Whether it’s the psychological creature feature of Bad Travelling, or the soldiers encountering a familiar old God in In Vaulted Halls Entombed, Love, Death and Robots continues to delight, entertain and engage.
Love, Death + Robots is available to stream on Netflix.
