Commentary: ‘Love Death + Robots’ Subverts Horror Expectations With Angels
by Frank Martin
It’s no surprise that angels play a huge part in fiction. There’s obviously the religious element that appeals to storytellers. But angels go much further. They are representative of otherworldly beings in a battle between good and evil. Also, their design ranges wildly depending on the medium. Many people are used to glowing beings of light, but the source material depicts them as something far more abstract. In a way, their existence is almost incomprehensible to the human mind, so they can take on a form that’s borderline monstrous, even if the work itself isn’t rooted in horror. Fortunately, a recent Love Death + Robots episode leaned into the horror side of angels in an unexpected way.
“How Zeke Got Religion” takes place during World War II and follows a group of soldiers on a mission to stop a team of Nazis summoning a fallen angel from Hell. One of the soldiers, Zeke (Keston John), isn’t religious, but his skepticism is tried during the mission. The soldiers time the dropping of their bombs right, killing the Nazis, but they fail to prevent the summoning. The angel flies up and attacks their ship, killing many of the soldiers. They only manage to defeat it by utilizing Christian iconography, the fallen angel’s weakness.
The story really takes second place to the action as the fallen angel tears the plane apart and brutalizes the soldiers. What stands out the most is the design of the fallen angel itself. It leans heavily into the abstract and often monstrous description angels have in ancient biblical works. It has a multitude of limbs and wings without any real human form, nothing like the common look angels have in other tales. But what really sets it apart is the angel’s face. Because it looks so monstrous, one would assume that the face would look monstrous, as well. Instead, this angel has what appears to be a fragile, doll-like face. The juxtaposition between the infantile-looking mask and the angel’s monster’s body creates a true sense of horror.
Love Death + Robots is now streaming on Netflix.