Oats Studios - A Gleefully Gruesome Collection of Sci-Fi Shorts

Review by Matt Owen

In 2017, Neill Blomkamp, the celebrated writer/director who helped create movies like District 9 and Elysium, founded an indie film company called Oats Studios. Made as a sort of testing site for various ideas, the company has since produced a series of short sci-fi films, exploring a variety of topics in a signature grim style. Although their filmography is also available on websites like YouTube, ten of their shorts were compiled into a collection in 2020, simply titled Oats Studios and made available on Netflix, opening up the catalogue to a whole new audience. Similar to other anthologies on the service like Love Death + Robots and Black Mirror, Oats Studios evokes an eerie sense of dread through its inventive tales, with short interludes of adventure and comedy to balance the scales. Despite a few weak entries and the lack of a cohesive theme, Oats Studios has both the star power and intrigue to warrant a watch.

Above all else, Oats Studios excels when it's digging at the dark underside of science fiction, spinning stories that are both aggressive and unnerving. This is no more apparent than in the opening short titled Rakka, which details the aftermath of an alien invasion circa 2020. Following their complete conquering of Earth, a reptilian species of otherworldly creatures have humanity in a stranglehold, but small patches of survivors fight back with last-ditch guerilla warfare and subterfuge. Starring the queen of science fiction, Sigourney Weaver, as Jasper, the leader of the rebellion, Rakka packs all the production value of a feature-length film in just under 30 minutes. Despite the assumed relatively low budget, the CGI is exemplary, leading to harrowing imagery like the Eiffel Tower covered in corpses, amorphous alien towers, and vistas of utter destruction. It's intense, bleak, and sets a proper tone for the collection ahead, even if its heights are rarely matched moving forward.

Things get even more disturbing in the next short film, Firebase, a supernatural story set against the Vietnam War, producing unthinkable horrors. With tinges of conspiracy throughout, this episode focuses on a CIA operative Jacob Palmer (Nic Rhind), who searches for a powerful being known as “The River God”. Far more gory than Rakka or most of the other shorts in Oats Studios, Firebase is relentless, with each subsequent scene packed with either action or terror. Here, the collection showcases some masterfully gruesome practical effects, complimenting its otherwise CGI-heavy nature. Yet, within Firebase, some of the weaker elements of Oats Studio begin to show, as the narrative feels scattered at times, with a script that boasts cool ideas but fails to execute them in meaningful ways. Still, this is some gory good science fiction that you definitely won't want to watch during dinner.

Another standout of the bunch is Zygote, a foreboding short with hints of inspiration from Alien and The Thing, set in a mining outpost in the far reaches of the Arctic Circle. This creature feature follows two poor saps, Barklay (Dakota Fanning) and Quinn (Jose Pablo Cantillo), the last survivors of a hellish attack. On the run for their lives, the pair try to evade a predator the likes of which they've never seen. Well-acted and suspenseful, this episode keeps you on the edge of your seat, and then throws you out of it with some spectacular monster-fuelled action. Much like Rakka, Zygote has an intriguing hook and provides enough substance to get invested, but leaves plenty of room for interpretation. I wouldn't mind seeing this expanded into a feature-length film, but it's good enough as it stands.

A bit of levity can be found in shorts like Cooking With Bill, a smattering of late-night infomercials featuring the sales couple Bill (Alec Gillis) and Karen (Carly Pope), showing off the latest and greatest in home kitchenware. With futuristic gadgets like the multi-bladed, chainsaw-esque “Damasu 950”, Bill struggles to keep demonstrations in check, often resulting in serious bodily harm or some sort of gross-out rug pull. Another highlight of the more comedic episodes is simply titled God, and stars Sharlto Copley as the “big man upstairs”, who is joined by his butler, Geoffrey (Jason Cope), as he carries out unusual experiments on humanity. The results of these experiments are played out in miniature form on God's observation table, resulting in some unique forced-perspective visuals. Carried by Copley's off-kilter performance, God is arguably the best of the dark comedy episodes in Oats Studios.

Similarly silly vibes can be found in the episode Bad President, which sees President Billy Coltrane (Alec Gillis) struggling in his position at the Oval Office, mostly due to his irresponsible behaviour and frat boy demeanour. To be blunt, Bad President feels out of place with the rest of the collection, featuring no notable sci-fi concepts, and as such, feels like a weird political rip-off of the Bad Santa movies that's neither funny nor witty. Lastly, a fully animated short, Kapture: Locust, follows two researchers as they test out futuristic weapons, leading to darkly humorous outcomes. Unfortunately, some shoddy CGI makes the viewing experience worse for wear, but it's still miles better than Bad President. That said, all four of these sillier episodes are less than 10 minutes each, leaving minimal time wasted.

A brief runtime is put to better use in ADAM: Episode 2 and ADAM: Episode 3, a pair of fully animated episodes that follows a group of once-human criminals, now turned to androids, as they trek across a wasteland of decay. Freed into sentience by a fearless leader, the machines learn the truth of their existence and question their next steps forward. The remnants of humanity are further explored in ADAM: Episode 3, offering deeper twists that leave you with more questions than answers. The shortest of all episodes in the collection, Gdansk, offers two incredibly brief scenes that contemplate the consequences of war. Though cool to watch, it lacks a real plot, coming across more like a proof-of-concept for CGI technology than anything else.

Overall, Oats Studios is an anthology collection that, within the space of roughly 2 hours, provides a bombardment of sci-fi scenarios that succeed to varying degrees. The stories that are more serious and have a runtime of over 20 minutes are usually the best, but some fun can still be found in the shorter episodes, albeit fleetingly. Most of the comedic stories fail to be all that memorable, but serve as a decent palate cleanser between the bloodier tales. To that point, I have to commend both the practical effects and CGI showcased in Oats Studios, which are remarkably effective, with only a few blemishes here and there. It doesn't overstay its welcome, and at best, it leaves you stunned and wanting more, making Oats Studios a decent sci-fi snack, provided you have the stomach for a bit of blood and guts.