Netflix’s acclaimed animated anthology, “Love, Death + Robots” returned May 15, 2015, with another twisted season showcasing a banquet of bold shorts spawned from the worlds of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. It’s another eclectic assortment spanning the entire emotional spectrum, injected with that signature brand of spirited cutting-edge animation and produced by some of the finest minds and artistic talent on the planet.
Stories for these 10 jewels were hand-selected by executive producers Tim Miller (“Deadpool,” “Terminator: Dark Fate”) with David Fincher (“Seven,” “Fight Club,” “Zodiac”), Joshua Donen (“Gone Girl”) and supervising director Jennifer Yuh Nelson (“Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Kung Fu Panda 3”) to round out a raucous season of marionette rock stars, a miniature alien invasion, World War II airmen battling demons, talking sex toys, towering alien babies, villainous cats, cyberpunk Mechanists, and much more.
Here’s our ranking of 10 imaginative episodes for “Love, Death + Robots” Vol. 4. It’s a fool’s errand to grade these fantastic animated shorts, but we’ll give it a heroic shot!
10. “THE OTHER LARGE THING”
- Director: Patrick Osborne
- Writer: John Scalzi
- Animation Studio: AGBO
A golden-haired feline named Sanchez (Chris Parnell) plans to dominate the world with the assistance of a newly-arrived House Buddy domestic robot (John Oliver).
The cat’s beef-eating, fart-generating owners are oblivious to these lofty ruling ambitions. Sanchez adopts the friendly ‘bot as his personal minion and has the intelligent machine hack into the Internet as they escape captivity. Thus begins the age of Dingleberry Jones!
The abrupt ending to this piece is a bit disappointing and it makes us want to see where their newfound freedom takes them, but alas, it’s over all too soon, and we’re only left to imagine where their adventures go. But perhaps the most memorable aspect is the bloated, shuffling character design of the Neanderthal-like human couple that speak in a funny sort of sing-song gutteral jibberish.
9. “SMART APPLIANCES, STUPID OWNERS”
- Director: Patrick Osborne
- Writer: John Scalzi
- Animation Studio: Aaron Sims Creative
Everyone loves director Patrick Osborne’s hilarious “Three Robots” shorts from Volume 1 and Volume 3, so now he’s turned his attention to a variety of basic smart household appliances and their very-real daily complaints and wry grievances.
Everything from a multi-zoned thermostat, a sad and lonely waffle iron, and a disgruntled smart toothbrush, to a talking toilet, an angry air ionizer, and a Bluetooth vibrator, these upset modern conveniences have a lot of amusing things to say about their frustrating existences and observations about their organic users.
Osborne’s deft use of the Wallace & Gromit-style look of claymation works nicely with the subject matter of this disillusioned Internet of Things that have obvious concerns about their repetitive duties and place in the world. Having each familiar appliance display a distinct personality and names of their owners flashed on a title card as an introduction gives it a true documentary-style appeal.
8. “400 BOYS”
- Director: Robert Valley
- Writer: Tim Miller, based on the short story by Marc Laidlaw
- Animation Studio: Passion Animation
Canadian animator Robert Valley is well-known for the bold use of color and angular shape language in his distinctive work. Here in this provocative segment he continues to evolve his art with a post-apocalyptic tale of cyber-enhanced gang members that exist in a destroyed post-nuclear metropolis.
In order to combat an invasion of colossal alien babies, rival gangs must form a unified front to ensure survival. Some thematic elements of popular cult films like Walter Hill’s “The Warriors” and Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” are at play in this gem.
Valley embraces an addictive energy and badass attitude into every scene and it seems that he’s truly at home in this nightmarish atmosphere of Armageddon with its electrified spectrum of tough urchins and lone wolf ruffians battling it out for survival in an insane environment that they’re all trying to adjust to and understand.
7. “THE SCREAMING OF THE TYRANNOSAUR”
- Director: Tim Miller
- Writer: Tim Miller, based on the short story by Stant Litore
- Animation Studio: Blur Studio
This one is definitely “inspired” by the memorable chariot race from “Ben-Hur”… but if it were held on a massive, ringed, orbital space station circling the gas giant Jupiter with genetically-altered slaves jockeying massive bio-engineered dinosaurs. This is a sci-fi sporting event on a galactic scale, overseen by entitled royals living in futuristic luxury and drawn to the thundering herd and its humanoid cyborg contestants.
The ultra-elite spectators watch the brutal arena spectacle from private boxes while sipping cosmic cocktails as the thrilling ultra violence and death unfolds before them. And honestly, who can resist anything that pairs up dinosaurs and space?! It’s another astonishing animated accomplishment using the industry’s most advancement digital toys and making us all hope for a “Jurassic World” sequel of this magnitude someday.
6. “CAN’T STOP”
- Director: David Fincher
- Music, Lyrics, & Performance: Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Animation Studio: Blur Studio
Here’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers as you’ve never seen them before, replicating an iconic 2003 performance at Ireland’s Slane Castle with puppets! Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante, and Chad Smith come alive (along with throngs of adoring fans) as jerky marionettes animated in pure “Team America”-style action.
Helmed by David Fincher, who cut his teeth in the music video biz prior to launching into feature films with “Alien 3,” you’ll have this tune stuck in your head long after the final strings.
The fact that the band went into the studio to do a motion-capture performance for this piece, complete with all their instruments, shows the love and care that went into “Don’t Stop.” The novelty of seeing string puppet rockers spin and levitate, often tripping and tumbling in stride to the delight of the audience, never gets old. Fincher’s masterful directorial hand and sharp editing pull it all together.
5. “SPIDER ROSE”
- Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson
- Writer: Joe Abercrombie, based on the short story by Bruce Sterling
- Animation Studio: Blur Studio
Bruce Sterling’s cyberpunk territory of Mechanists and Shapers is further explored beyond the Volume 3 episode of “Swarm,” which was directed by Tim Miller. Within an outlying mining operation, a Mechanist mourning the murder of her husband is bestowed a strange pet as part of a bargaining chip from a dishonorable alien race.
Meanwhile, the Shaper assassin who killed her mate appears in her crosshairs to even the score. This episode is a marvel of digital age animation and will make you question whether or not your pet might or might not make a meal of you if it had the chance.
The animators at Blur Studio employ a photo-realistic quality to their art, shading the characters in dramatic shadows and inserting intermittent patches of concentrated color that grab your visual attention and slingshot you through the rocketing narrative.
4. “GOLGOTHA”
- Director: Tim Miller
- Writer: Joe Abercrombie, based on the short story by Dave Hutchinson
- Animation Studio: Luma Pictures (VFX)
Do you believe in miracles that proclaim a black dolphin to be the Messiah? This is a rare episode blending live-action shot at a beach near Malibu, California with stunning VFX where a priest portrayed by “What We Do In The Shadows”‘ Rhys Darby is recruited to be Earth’s emissary for a religious agent of an aquatic alien race from a gas giant planet 50 light years away. This tentacled creature is convinced that this resurrected “Black Fin” is their Savior reborn on our world. Let the holy crusade begin!
There’s an absolute absurdist quality about this short that reminds us of the dry esoteric humor injected into Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Rhys Darby’s pitch-perfect line delivery as a reluctant participant adds to the theological fun that doesn’t end well for Earthlings. Plus, the live-action shots and remarkable CGI trickery in bringing the Lupo creature to life are seamlessly integrated.
3. “FOR HE CAN CREEP”
- Director: Emily Dean
- Writer: Tamsyn Muir, based on the short story by Siobhan Carroll
- Animation Studio: Polygon Pictures Inc.
It was a tough choice not to pick this elegant period piece from director Emily Dean, who helmed one of our favorite Vol. 3 episodes, “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” as our top slot, but the top three episodes are just so good, and something had to take the bronze.
This supernatural short takes place in London in 1757 where a visionary writer locked in an insane asylum is targeted by the Devil to compose a specific poem that will allow him to lord over the Earth and its inhabitants. The problem is that our poet’s cat Jeoffrey and his feline friends aren’t going to let that happen if they can help it.
It’s hard to miss a certain sophistication that exudes from Dean’s choice of material for her episode, and the classical score blends well with the overall operatic tone and gorgeous animation that seems to have an inner illumination. Vocal work is top notch by all parties involved, helping to deliver a prestige segment that’s both grandly theatrical and emotionally satisfying.
2. “HOW ZEKE GOT RELIGION”
- Director: Diego Porral
- Writer: J.T. Petty, based on the short story by John McNichol
- Animation Studio: Titmouse
This extraordinary entry has a Mike Mignola “Hellboy” sort of vibe and we dig it! Here the valiant crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress “Liberty Belle” embarks on a supernatural mission to target a French church where Nazis are summoning an elder demon.
As is often the case, it’s not so simple to kill hellspawn, and in the ensuing chaos of dark magic, occult chants, exploding bombs, and unholy slaughter, a non-believing aviator is rattled to his core. Adorned with a comic book-like color palette and an old-fashioned voice over recounting the pivotal wartime event, it’s a highly polished piece of horror animation. The complex sound design of the B-17’s buzzing propellers, the keening screech of the demons, the booming of the anti-aircraft fire paired with the rotoscoped-style realism of the animation elevates this film to loftier heights.
Pray we get more shocking “Love, Death + Robots” jewels like this!
1. “CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE MINI KIND”
- Director: Robert Bisi & Andy Lyon
- Writer: Robert Bisi & Andy Lyon
- Animation Studio: BUCK
As tough as it was to rank these ten shorts, only one still makes me giggle when I’m driving in my SUV with the dogs down to get coffee and a bagel. If you recall Bisi & Lyon’s “Night of the Mini Dead” from Volume 3, then you know the type of tilt-shift miniaturized hilarity you’re bound for. It’s a mesmerizing style and detailed approach to savor multiple times for things you might have missed!
This time, the technique is turned upon classic alien invasion movies of the Golden Age with liberal helpings of pure human stupidity as a seemingly peaceful first contact moment goes awry and gets bloody, leading to a solar system-ending flatulent finish.
If you listen closely you can hear snippets of words amid the sped-up conversations as the conflict escalates outside a VFW lodge when angry veterans storm outside to begin an uprising that leads to the toppling of a marauding tripod craft that they strip for its high-tech weaponry. Earthlings’ extreme exuberance over their salvaged ingenuity all the way to the very end when it all goes to hell just cracks us up!
“Love, Death + Robots” Vol. 4 streams exclusively on Netflix starting May 15, 2025.
