One of the many tragedies of streaming is we’re potentially racing to catch up with the new. One of the others is that the new is often then cancelled anyway. But there’s a lot of great stuff in streaming services back catalogues and that’s why Alasdair Stuart has been digging through the OATS movies released in 2017. OATS is Neill Blomkamp’s studio and the District 9. Chappie and more recently Gran Turismo director’s style is very much in effect, for better and worse.

One note before we dive in. The studio’s goal is distributing experimental short films via YouTube and Steam to gauge interest in possible expansion into movies. Close to a decade later, none of them have done so yet but as we’ll see, that’s a shame.

Rakka opens the series and like several is a 20 minute plus expanded deep dive into a world. That world is Earth, in the near future. Conquered by the Klum (‘Klume’) aggressive psychically powered reptilians, the planet is being reverse terraformed into a methane soaked hellscape. Humanity has become petri dishes for the Klum’s experiments. We’re losing, and losing badly. Until 2020 when the Resistance makes a hard-earned left turn into something like a victory.

Key to that victory are Nosh and Amir. Brandon Auret as Nosh is a joyously, growling pinwheel of pyromania, a man whose love for explosives finds a new home in the ruins of humanity. Amir, played by Eugene Khumbanyiwa, is a ruin, a man torn apart and rebuilt by the Klum and, somehow, a survivor. One in every ten million makes it, and those that do have incredible power. Blomkamp shows us this by the final chapter of the story being a vision Amir has, showing Jasper (Sigourney Weaver) and her resistance team using the brain blockers designed by Nosh to down a Klum aircraft and kill the pilot.

In story terms that’s it. This feels like a draft, with the characters sketched in and no resolution. Weaver and Auret are especially impressive but they, and everyone else, aren’t so much saying dialogue as they are hitting marks. It’s not a criticism, just the nature of the format.

The technical side is far more polished. The Klum’s spiny, oil-slick technology is mammoth in scope and queasy in appearance and the Klum themselves are nicely realized, perpetually tensed murderous bipedal crocodiles. The standout sequence here is a Klum fire team using a horribly mutated politician, barefoot and in rags, through the streets as a lure for humans. It’s the most terrifying version of the ‘DO NOT RUN! WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS!’ beat from Mars Attacks! and it’s chilling. If the full movie, if we ever got it, had three moments this good it’d be essential viewing. At one it’d be great.

Verdict: Rakka looks incredible and is crammed with the sort of neat, squicky visual touches that Blomkamp excels at. Its characters aren’t there, but that’s not the point for this and if you liked Blomkamp’s movies you’ll like this. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart