It's a new season of "Love, Death, and Robots," so it's a new "Rank 'Em" list. Before we get into the rankings, I want to emphasize that this was a good set of shorts and I enjoyed all of them. There weren't any obvious stinkers in the bunch, which made it difficult to sort them. Still, I had my favorites that I want to give kudos to.
Here we go, from best to least best:
"Swarm" - All of the shorts show off impressive animation to varying degrees, but this is the only one I felt had a properly interesting science fiction premise. We start out with two scientists visiting an alien collective, and the situation quickly turns horrific. It turns out that as the humans have been studying the aliens, the aliens have been studying the humans. So, along with some great nightmare imagery, there's a nice dose of existential horror to go with it.
"Mason's Rats" - It's a goofy update of the old pests versus exterminators idea, but I just love the execution. You've got Craig Ferguson voicing the cranky old farmer who finds himself up against a colony of intelligent, hostile rats, and gets killer robots involved. This could have escalated into another doomsday scenario, but I like that the ending was actually rather sweet. I got the most entertainment value out of this one, which endeared me to it enormously.
"Three Robots: Exit Strategies" - This is going to make some people very upset because it has a few jabs that can be read as overtly political. However, the robots going on a tour of humanity's futile attempts to stave off the end of civilization is hilarious. The droll commentary is so dark and so cutting, but also somehow an awful lot of fun. The real target here is human hubris, and a reminder to the rich and the powerful that we'll all go together when we go.
"The Very Pulse of the Machine" - A survival story with a gorgeous aesthetic, and some alien landscapes I won't soon forget. The hallucinogenic atmosphere and the trippy concepts kept me very invested, and I especially like the ending, which reminds me of a lot of the more psychedelic science-fiction short stories I was reading in high school. I've seen this kind of story done a few times before, but never as well.
"Jibaro" - An original short written and directed by Alberto Mielgo, who also made "The Witness." This one is just pure style, with frenetic cinematography and no real story or dialogue. There are, however, two characters, a pair of lovers/enemies who seem to embody primal forces more than anything else. It's wonderful just to look at the thing, and it's the best piece of pure animation of all the shorts.
"Night of the Mini Dead" - A quick seven minute zombie apocalypse in miniature. The horrific collapse of society and a nuclear holocaust is hilarious from a distance, and with the events all sped up. The sound design is especially important for this one, with the squeaky chipmunk voices and the high pitched carnage. I'm only putting this so low because it is just the one gag, and this is the shortest short.
"In Vaulted Halls Entombed" - A rescue mission goes from bad to worse in this action horror piece. It goes by a little too quick and doesn't quite nail the ending, but I like the sense of tension that it maintains, and the eldritch abominations that it manages to invoke by the finale. The almost photo-real animation is a little bland, but avoids the stiffness that you see with similar characters.
"Bad Traveling" - This is the one that David Fincher directed, and the longest of this set. The story and premise are good, but I hate the way that this one looks. It's dark and murky and you can't see much. The character designs don't try to be photorealistic, but they're also remarkably unappealing for animation. I suppose that's appropriate for a horror short, but it made this a difficult watch.
"Kill Team Kill" - There are an awful lot of shorts in this group that are about a set of soldiers who encounter the unknown, and then get into violent battles that end with most of them dead. This is the one where a team of quippy Green Berets meet a monstrous cyborg bear created to be a deadly killing machine. There's really not much else to it, but the animation is cool and the designs are fun.
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