Here's what happens when you spend all your budget on special effects and props, and realise you have nothing left for scriptwriting. It's quite blatant body horror, somewhat well done, thinly veiled as something deeper. What's worse, is some of the stellar acting performances for such poor writing.
The base ideas behind many episodes are interesting, but so poorly written and full of tropes that it makes for a very difficult watch. It's extremely shallow, and feels like they had a vision of how everything would look, and worked backwards from there.
It's difficult to summarise everything wrong with just the first two episodes alone, which are notably two of the longer episodes. They're both full of mindless patriotism, which unfortunately doesn't seem self-aware. The second episode literally demonises the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, spins the US as a victim, and then just when you expect a deeper meaning to appear about the true horrors and atrocities committed by the US military, pulls the chair away and turns a soldier into the Doom Slayer. The first episode isn't much better, but fortunately only strokes the ego, rather than glorifying horrible moments of human history.
Fortunately, the following episodes are slightly more watchable, but still ultimately would feel at home on Shudder.
If you're into body horror and gore centred special effects, there's a few episodes here which might be worth the runtime. While this series of "short films" falls short in writing, the effects, cinematography and audio are often brilliant, backed up by some good acting in places.
I'd strongly advise anybody curious avoids the first two episodes, as they really are awful and a waste of your time. I'll try to save you some time with the below key theme summaries:
Episode 1 - Rakka - Aliens, military, revolution, technology body horror, gore, patriotism
Episode 2 - Firebase - Vietnam, war, military, supernatural, body horror
Episode 3 - Cooking with Bill - Analogue horror, infomercials, body horror, food horror (has Don't Hug Me I'm Scared vibes)
Episode 4 - God - Religion, comedy, parody
Episode 5 - Zygote - Space horror, body horror, lone survivor, isolation (takes inspiration from The Thing)
Episode 6 - Bad President - Government, politics, incompetent president, parody (0/10 felt completely out of place and missed the mark)
Episode 7/8 - Adam - Robots, spiritualism, exile, technology
Episode 9 - Gdansk - Middle Ages, gore, giants, space, technology (feels like a tech demo)
Episode 10 - Kapture - Science, firearms & weaponry, experiments & testing, technology, gore
Maybe worth a watch: 3,4,5 Avoid: 1,2,6,9,10.
The base ideas behind many episodes are interesting, but so poorly written and full of tropes that it makes for a very difficult watch. It's extremely shallow, and feels like they had a vision of how everything would look, and worked backwards from there.
It's difficult to summarise everything wrong with just the first two episodes alone, which are notably two of the longer episodes. They're both full of mindless patriotism, which unfortunately doesn't seem self-aware. The second episode literally demonises the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, spins the US as a victim, and then just when you expect a deeper meaning to appear about the true horrors and atrocities committed by the US military, pulls the chair away and turns a soldier into the Doom Slayer. The first episode isn't much better, but fortunately only strokes the ego, rather than glorifying horrible moments of human history.
Fortunately, the following episodes are slightly more watchable, but still ultimately would feel at home on Shudder.
If you're into body horror and gore centred special effects, there's a few episodes here which might be worth the runtime. While this series of "short films" falls short in writing, the effects, cinematography and audio are often brilliant, backed up by some good acting in places.
I'd strongly advise anybody curious avoids the first two episodes, as they really are awful and a waste of your time. I'll try to save you some time with the below key theme summaries:
Episode 1 - Rakka - Aliens, military, revolution, technology body horror, gore, patriotism
Episode 2 - Firebase - Vietnam, war, military, supernatural, body horror
Episode 3 - Cooking with Bill - Analogue horror, infomercials, body horror, food horror (has Don't Hug Me I'm Scared vibes)
Episode 4 - God - Religion, comedy, parody
Episode 5 - Zygote - Space horror, body horror, lone survivor, isolation (takes inspiration from The Thing)
Episode 6 - Bad President - Government, politics, incompetent president, parody (0/10 felt completely out of place and missed the mark)
Episode 7/8 - Adam - Robots, spiritualism, exile, technology
Episode 9 - Gdansk - Middle Ages, gore, giants, space, technology (feels like a tech demo)
Episode 10 - Kapture - Science, firearms & weaponry, experiments & testing, technology, gore
Maybe worth a watch: 3,4,5 Avoid: 1,2,6,9,10.