Netflix’s often stellar sci-fi/fantasy anthology series Love, Death + Robots returns for Season 4 with another clutch of episodes, each highlighting a different style of animation and storytelling. As ever it’s a mixed bag, with some of the shorts significantly better than others, but it’s once again a unique collection showcasing all kinds of different ideas.
With that in mind, let’s briefly recap all of the episodes in order to get a feeling for how the season overall plays out.
Episode 1, “Can’t Stop”
The marketing spiel for this episode describes it as a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert “with some strings attached”, and I wasn’t expecting that to be so literal. But that’s genuinely what this opener is. There’s no plot, there are no characters – with the exception of the band members, rendered with startling likeness – and there’s no underlying message, unless it’s one about the hazy intersection between art and flagrant promotion.
“Can’t Stop” is a six-minute recreation of the Chili Peppers’ 2003 Slane Castle performance performed by string puppets and directed – I kid you not – by David Fincher, whose early career as a music-video director overlaps in the most meta of ways with his executive producer status on this anthology.
If you’re a fan of the band, you’re in for a real treat. It’s visually sumptuous and packed with detail, but for non-fans it’ll be wholly inconsequential. Mileage may vary.
Episode 2, “Close Encounters of the Mini Kind”
Aliens arrive on Earth and are predictably shot to death by the police, coincidentally immediately after revealing that the spacefaring species is extraterrestrially well-hung (it’s like Bad Thoughts all over again.) Since these aliens aren’t the type to take that kind of slight in stride, they invade and conquer in a flurry of tilt-shifted miniature dioramas full of sex gags and uber-violence.
A stylistic sequel to the Season 3 episode “Night of the Mini Dead”, this is another short and silly bout of technical craftsmanship in lieu of any deeper ideas or meaning. It won’t change your life but it’s extremely fun and visually impressive, not to mention how it raises some interesting questions about how the concept of continuity can work in an anthology series like this.
Episode 3, “Spider Rose”
After a couple of fun but frivolous episodes, Love, Death + Robots Season 4 really gets going in Episode 3 with a much longer, richer, and more engaging chapter. Following a grieving cyborg woman swimming through the zero gravity of a lonely space station who is looking for revenge on the piratical race that killed her husband and colony, it’s a striking-looking story about grief, trauma, and unlikely companionship that builds to a surprisingly ballsy ending.
It also has a cute CGI alien creature, which is always fun. There are tons of interesting ideas here, including the advantages of technology allowing for a syringe to the temple that scares off painful memories, and the action, when it arrives, is kinetic and visceral. It’s all rendered in a very lifelike style with some impressive voicework, but it’s the eerie ending that really makes the short memorable.
Spider Rose, having accomplished her objective, willingly giving herself over as a snack to her new pet, who emerges from a cocoon having evolved to resemble his mammalian meal, is exactly the kind of challengingly dour climax this show is good at.
A still from Love, Death + Robots Season 4 | Image via Netflix
Episode 4, “400 Boys”
Drawn to resemble a graphic novel, “400 Boys” depicts a ruined city with a mish-mash of cultural influences – everyone talks with an English accent and there are crushed red phone boxes in the foreground, but all the street names are American-sounding and there are volcanoes dotting the coast – and raises more questions than it answers. Control of the city, ruined by what seems like some kind of nuclear disaster, has been divvied up among a collection of stylized gangs, including an all-Black, all-female troop who wield sharpened hockey sticks and careen around on rollerblades.
The gangs unite in the face of a new threat to them all – an army of giant babies that might be gods or something else but nonetheless are demolishing their way through Fun City. The visual of towering, murderous infants is a powerful one, and the action – the entire episode is basically one long battle after the initial meet-and-greet – has an unpleasantly tactile quality.
This is the kind of short that demands a longer story set in the same oddly idiosyncratic universe. I, for one, would like to see more of the various gangs – all of which seem to have shared unexplained telekinesis – as they squabble for turf.
Episode 5, “The Other Large Thing”
As a cat owner I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if the moggies all teamed up with sentient robots to take over the world, which is exactly the premise of “The Other Large Thing”. Told from the perspective of “Sanchez”, a fearsome looking ginger tom with indifferent, slobby owners he considers to be his slaves, it’s like a cross between that Diary of a Sad Cat YouTube video and The Terminator.
Sanchez is written to speak in exclusively grandiose terms like Stewie Griffin, which is very funny, as is his nickname for the household robot – Thumb Bringer, because it can opens tins of tuna. What seems like it’s going to be a cautionary tale about technology quickly morphs into a more upbeat story of the overlooked and abused rising up against their fleshy oppressors.
The icing on the cake is the late reveal of Sanchez’s true name, which turns out to be Dingleberry Jones. Just perfect.
Episode 6, “Golgotha”
Should we be more worried about how we’re treating sea creatures? “Golgotha” suggests so. This live-action short imagines a scenario in which an aquatic alien race named the Lupo has made itself known to Earth for mysterious purposes, and sends a representative to entreat with a priest named Father Maguire.
Maguire is a witness to a supposed miracle, the resurrection of the Blackfin, which turns out to be a dolphin. This is of some significance to the Lupo, who consider the dolphin to be a messiah. Despite an agreeable discussion about faith, the Lupo envoy has no choice but to trigger to an invasion on the grounds of how those who walk have treated those who swim, and the episode ends with tentacled ships darkening the sky as the Lupo unleash a barrage on laser fire on humanity.
“We’ve made a mistake,” Maguire says. He’s quite right.
Episode 7, “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur”
Mr. Beast, evidently not content with being the biggest YouTuber in the world and hosting game shows on Prime Video, guest-stars in the seventh episode of Love, Death + Robots Season 4, which also happens to be one of the very best.
Luckily, Mr. Beast isn’t in it very much. He plays the host of a deadly game occurring in space for the pleasure of the aristocracy, with gladiators and dinosaurs competing in a race. It’s Gladiator meets Jurassic Park meets The Fast and the Furious, which is as fun as it sounds, brought to vivid life with more impressive visuals.
There’s an epic feeling to the late appearance of a T-Rex that leads to a brilliant if bleak conclusion, and it’s surprising how much depth of character is crammed into these ten minutes without any letup in the action. Easily one of the season’s finer instalments, even with Mr. Beast’s involvement.
A still from Love, Death + Robots Season 4 | Image via Netflix
Episode 8, “How Zeke Got Religion”
Religion comes to the fore again in a hand-drawn effort about a WW2 bomber crew whose mission to bomb a German church is thrown for a loop when Nazi satanic rituals summon a horde of demons.
Equating Nazism with supernatural horror isn’t exactly new ground, but the episode’s sudden pivot from period action drama to messy creature-feature is highly effective and results in a ton of sloppy action which is great fun to watch.
The religious moralizing isn’t to my taste, but one may well look to God in the face of evil, and there’s nowhere you’re more likely to find it than in World War II.
Episode 9, “Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners”
An anthology within an anthology, this penultimate episode collects a bunch of shorts, each a few seconds long, featuring various household appliances, from thermostats to toothbrushes to waffle irons, complaining about their stupid/lazy/dirty human owners.
The appliances are all rendered in a claymation style and have some recognisable voice talent bringing them to life. It’s a funny idea that ends before it starts to wear out its welcome, but it’s a surprisingly frivolous thing to crop up so late in the season.
I can totally imagine my own appliances carrying on like this behind my back, though.
Episode 10, “For He Can Creep”
Love, Death + Robots Season 4 concludes with another cat-focused chapter, this one a little bit more elaborate, granted. In London, 1757, a good boy named Jeoffry prowls an abbey feasting on Satan’s imps until Satan himself arrives to make the cat a proposition.
Jeoffry, like Sanchez/Dingleberry Jones, believes the humans to be his pets, and the poet who resides in the abbey his favourite of all. So, Jeoffry’s not especially inclined to hand the fellow over to Satan, no matter how many treats he offers. Satan believes the poet’s verse can grant him dominion over all creation, so when Jeoffry bites him on the finger, he threatens the cat’s life to force the poet to do his bidding.
The climax is a funny action set-piece in which the denizens of Hell fight a team of alley cats led by Jeoffrey and “Nighthunter Moppet”. It’s daft but nonetheless entertaining, especially for cat lovers, and if I was inclined to believe that any animal species could beat back Lucifer himself, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was the felines.
