Netflix has released the second volume of ‘Love, Death + Robots’, an anthology of short animated films and well… they are not riveting. While the first edition with 18 films on the menu offered a wide range of stories – from super stunning to shitty stuff, the second volume with just 8 movies on offer is largely just slow, boring and repetitive.

The first one titled ‘Automated Customer Service’ is about a cleaning robot going crazy and attacking its old owner. Another Netflix animated film ‘The Mitchells vs the Machines’ basically had the same theme – robots rebelling against humans – and was released in the same month too. So unfortunately, the whole ‘machine vs man’ angle in two of the short films in this collection just felt stale.

The animation quality in most of the films are A+, some of them are visually stunning. However, the plot-lines aren’t very interesting and pale out in comparison of the first installment. The one titled ‘All Through The House’ had an interesting spin to the Santa Claus legend. In fact, most of the plot-lines seemed to be inspired by classic tales and stories. Like the one called ‘The Tall Grass’ was a total rip-off of Stephen King’s novel ‘In The Tall Grass’ and nope, King gets no credit. The most boring story in this collection was ‘The Drowned Giant’, which at first felt like a promising watch and looked like it was inspired from ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, but was painfully insipid. And some warning – do not watch it while eating anything, you will lose your appetite.

Some of us love watching animation, because it offers a more fun escape from reality than live-action-movies. But the problem with ‘Love, Death + Robots’ is the fact that the animation in some of them are too realistic and even the themes are extremely dark, dystopian and existentialist. There was very little humor or fun elements in the stories. We could just watch a regular movie instead. Sigh.

If you are in mood for some dark, depressing and slow animated films, go ahead, stream volume two of ‘Love, Death + Robots’.

Also read – ‘Love, Death + Robots’ Volume One Review

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Listen in to Episode 31 for a spoiler-free review of the animated show Castlevania