by Alex Tilton 

Love, Death and Robots (LDR) is a sci-fi, fantasy and horror anthology series that releases a new season about every eighteen months. The first season in 2019 was a mind-blowing rookie performance for a new series. Not only did it have a whopping eighteen fully animated shorts, almost all of them were amazing. The second season, in 2021, was disappointingly mediocre. It was much shorter (although the individual shorts were somewhat longer) and only a few of them were memorable.

Season 3 has the quality of season one and the length of season 2. Out of 9 shorts one is bad, one is decent but way too cute for its own good, and one is kind of ‘meh’. The other six are awesome. Two in particular are masterpieces of short-form horror, and they are the clear standouts from this season.

‘Bad Travelling’ tells the story of the crew of a steampunk shark fishing ship and their terrifying encounter with a thing-from-the-depths that attacks and infests their ship. It’s as dark as horror gets, and I will be going back to watch it many times because of how utterly, perfectly executed it is. I won’t spoil anything here, other than to say this episode simply will not stop pouring it on until the very end.

‘In Vaulted Halls Entombed’ then proceeds to find a way of (just barely) topping this. A special forces team tasked with rescuing a hostage from insurgents finds something so much worse than anything they could have imagined that literal madness ensues. Again, I will not spoil anything.

Finally, although not my favorite, the last entry of the series is also very worthy of praise. ‘Jibaro’ is a zero-dialogue story of a siren-like creature wiping out a small army, leaving behind only a deaf soldier named Jibaro, and what follows between the two of them. Fast paced, entirely non-verbal, and highly graphic in its brutality (not that the other stories aren’t), Jibaro will burn itself into your memory for its sheer colorfulness and fever dream style. My verdict is: Watch LDR Season 3, but be aware that there are some crappy parts, and the best parts are deeply disturbing. (Image source: collider.com)