The best movies of last year weren’t full, feature-length, SJW-driven schlock from Hollywood, but rather a series of short films from Oats Studios, headed up by South African auteur, Neill Blomkamp. There were three shorts in particular that went above and beyond expectations, Rakka, Zygote and Firebase. Well, one of them is getting a full-length release… if it can get properly funded this February.
The news about the crowdfunding drive comes courtesy of a tweet from the official Oats Studio Twitter account on January 5th, 2018.
Sorry for keeping you guys in the dark….. OATS is going to Crowdfund FIREBASE in February…
— Oats Studios (@oatsstudios) January 5, 2018
The crowdfunding starts in February, but they didn’t specify if this was going to be crowdfunded through something like Fig, or if it was going to be IndieGoGo or if it was going to be through Kickstarter.
However, a lot of people would love to see Zygote and Rakka become feature length films, too. Seriously, any of the three could turn into a full flick and it would be worth watching from start to finish. Firebase was a super hardcore, fringe sci-fi, gory masterpiece that really shocked me the first time I watched it. It would also likely be the cheapest of the three to film given that a large part of it could take place in the jungle where set dressing and production setups could be substituted for the natural look of the great outdoors.
If, however, you forgot what Firebase was like, you can check out the short film below to get a refresher.
The film follows a soldier suffering PTSD who attempts to take down a specter known as the River God, using specialized, fringe technology. It’s hard to think of any equivalent comparisons because we don’t get many sci-fi horror films set during Vietnam, with the partial exception of rarities like R-Point.
The cool part about it is that Firebase isn’t just horror, it’s action-horror… a genre that’s poorly represented in the West with schlock like Resident Evil and the increasingly terrible Underworld flicks.
We don’t know how much Oats Studio will be gunning for to fully fund Firebase or if they will leverage their partnership with Unity Technologies for the Unity 3D to cut costs, but I’m sure we’ll get details come February.
For more info on Oats Studios and their awesome shorts, be sure to check out their official website.
