This Experimental, Nightmarish Series of Shorts Does Cosmic and Body Horror Right

The big picture

• Making a feature film requires funding, consider starting with a short film to showcase your vision first.
• Oats Studios produces sci-fi, horror and dark fantasy short films with haunting themes and innovative storytelling.
• Director Neill Blomkamp's visionary shorts explore themes of body horror and twisted technology, captivating audiences.

Making a feature film is quite expensive, and even though some people have access to large amounts of cash, it is difficult to convince them to use it to finance the film. A finished script would be the typical “proof of concept” that would be used to prove that a film is worth investing in. But some aspiring filmmakers have tried shooting a short version of their feature film. Of course, it's a risk, as producing a short film is quite expensive on its own and very, very few short films will become features. But it can come out; the feature film cervical spine and the recent animated series Kingdom of the scavengers both started out as shorts.

Before, however, it was He lives in Joburga sci-fi short from the director Neill Blomkamp. The short caught the eye of Peter Jackson, allowing Blomkamp to expand the story into his extraordinary debut feature, District 9. Two films later, Blomkamp returned to that well. This time, not just with a short but with a full list of them. The concept of Oats Studios, which Blomkamp founded in 2017, was that it would produce several short films and the audience would select the best one to make into a feature film. And while none of the first round of shorts have been made into features, they're still interesting on their own as a collection of unfinished sci-fi concept work from Neil Blomkamp's notebook. Each is an unpolished, unfinished, unfiltered nightmare that collectively does as much to share its director's worldview as any feature ever could.

What are Oats Studios shorts?

Most of the Oats shorts bear the hallmarks of Blomkamp's particular visual style, combining vérité-style camerawork with wall-to-wall CGI to create a visceral sense of being in one of his fantastical landscapes. Thematically, he is always fixated on the barrier between body and mind, and he likes to destroy this division in his protagonists, seeing how he can break their sense of self and still feel human. This goes back to District 9in which South African fanatic Wikus (Sharlto Copley) has his body slowly transforming into what disgusts him the most, an alien shrimp. However, with Oats' shorts, Blomkamp ramps up the sadism even further. It's body horror, but while a filmmaker like David Cronenberg approaches horror moments with slow-warming dread, Blomkamp uses zero foreplay.

Take “Rakka,” the short that usually gets top billing from the set. (The shorts can be found on Netflix, presented as a single “season” in which each short is an “episode”). It's another alien invasion story, but unlike en District 9the aliens are vicious colonizers whose victory over humanity is almost complete. In the first 30 seconds, Blomkamp presents an image of the Eiffel Tower, which the aliens have covered with skinned, moaning human victims. This excess sets the tone for everything to come.

In addition to their superior technology, which they use to terraform the Earth into a giant swamp, the aliens can also control the minds of humans simply by looking at them, and can put alien goo into a human brain to permanently enslave them. Frankly, they might deserve the win. Despite this, Sigourney Weaver lead a human resistance in a desperate series of suicide missions. They are doomed until they meet Amir (District 9Eugene Khumbanyiwa)who has survived the worst alien experiments, and comes out the other end with superhuman abilities. And just when we humans are about to change course, the short ends on a cliffhanger. If you want to see more, you will need to add money to develop “Rakka” into a feature.

'Zygote', with Dakota Fanning, and 'Firebase' are other box office shorts from Oats Studios

“Zygote” is a bit more patient than “Rakka”, although not by much. Dakota Fanningcurrently starring the watchmen, plays Barkley, a synthetic human worker who is one of the few survivors of a cosmic terror mishap at a science facility in Alaska. The base has discovered some kind of deity, which forces the scientists at the base to separate the humans and merge them into a hideous monstrosity. The creature, when it appears, is compelling, even though you'll have seen something like it before if you have played The last of usor the indie game inside. The short itself borrows much of its mechanics from survival horror video games, as Barkley must find the key that will open the door to a room in the base while hiding from the creature.

“Firebase” is the most unique short on the Oats Studios slate. Set during the Vietnam War, it is about the battle between two superpowered beings on opposite sides of the conflict. The “River God” is a Vietnamese farmer (Carlo Yu) whose family was killed by an American airstrike. The overwhelming grief transformed him into an invulnerable being with a desire for revenge. Sergeant Hines (Steve Boyle) is an American soldier who has been chosen by “life itself” to fight the River God, and this gift also allows him to wear strange time-warping battle armor developed by the CIA. In many ways, it is the most difficult of these shorts to clarify. Its historical setting also gives it more substance than the other shorts, which take place in familiar imagined realities, even if the Vietnam setting seems to be largely about aesthetics. Perhaps these eccentricities were the reason “Firebase” was the short film from Oats Studios that audiences selected to be made into a feature film. However, the Kickstarter fell short and Oats Studios canceled the project.

Some of the Oats Studios shorts are more comedic

Not all of these shorts feature a battle between good and evil, which can only be resolved in a feature film. Some of them are just little comedic silliness (and even have their own “comic” Oats Studios production logo). In “Bad President!” Alec Gillis he plays a US president who is “here to party” and holds meetings with his staff after being hungover from all-night benders. It's pretty stale satire, although making the president's party mate a Canadian is a nice touch. “Cooking with Bill” is a satire on the home shopping network (also starring Alec Gillis), in which every kitchen utensil is powered by demonic technology and makes horribly misshapen food. Rounding out the Oats Studios comedies “God,” starring Sharlto Copley as God and Jason Cope as God's butler. This version of God is an even worse leader than Bad President. Set upon a massive model city or prehistoric plain, God tortures humans for his own amusement. It seems to be a satire on Blomkamp himself, who creates massive worlds only to fill them with pain. But it's hard to know how self-aware this satire really is.

Oats Studios short films also explore new technologies

Some of the Oats Studios shorts are animated. In “Kapture: Locust,” a pair of dweeby scientists demonstrate new military hardware to an unknown camera person. The mind control technology they've developed allows them to have a convict who has volunteered to be a guinea pig explode. It's a piece of world-building that isn't really going anywhere. “Adam” is much more substantial. In three episodes, it tells the story of cyborgs with metal bodies and human brains. They have been created by the dystopian Consortium, who create these sad creatures to punish the freedom fighters of their walled city. While the three episodes don't advance the story much, the world building is compelling.

“Adam” and “Kapture: Locust” were created using the Unity development platform, better known as a video game engine and asset store. (The New Yorker recently published a disturbing look at the growing importance in filmmaking of the Unreal and Unity asset stores.) The YouTube channel Oats Studio offers many behind-the-scenes videos of work done with Unity, which Blomkamp highlights as a technology that will democratize the entertainment industry. It's amazing that Blomkamp can create so many nightmarish visions of technology, where control of the body is removed from the mind, and then seamlessly transition into this dizzying futurism.. Watching him play with a digital asset created by the actor Michael Rogers (the antagonist in both Beyond the black rainbow i We're all going to the World's Fair), you feel like yelling at him that this is not going to end well. If there was still a chance to vote on which short should be expanded into a feature, it might be these behind-the-scenes features. How will this victory be delivered?

Oats Studios' shorts are available to stream on Netflix, with more to explore on their YouTube channel.

Watch on Netflix