Sigourney Weaver Leads a Resistance in Experimental 'Rakka' Film

In the year 2020, an alien race has taken over Earth and killed a majority of humanity, either through experimentation or other mysterious means. The first of District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s experimental, short sci-fi film series, Rakka, came out on Wednesday via YouTube, introducing sci-fi fans to a dismal, war-torn future starring CGI alien technology, human experimentation, a pyromaniac, and underground rebellion leader Sigourney Weaver.

Oats Studios, Blomkamp’s experimental filmmaking collective, is looking to experiment with sci-fi again, maybe in the same way the aliens of Rakka are shoving tubes through people’s brains. The theory behind Oats Studios is that if people like what they see on a small budget, maybe a feature film could get green-lighted.

Rakka is difficult to watch in that it introduces a desolate future where humans are forced to scavenge on our own planet, and the not-all-there, lizard-like CGI aliens have poisoned the atmosphere with methane in an attempt to terraform. Split into three parts, the short stories introduce various characters and plotlines that will, hopefully, be further explored in the future.

The goal is to produce four unique short projects for each “volume,” with Volume 1 consisting of Rakka as the first part and a project called Saigon as the second. Rakka introduces characters experimented on by the aliens who now have the same abilities, supposedly, as the aliens, another race of angel-like aliens who come to save humanity, and a collective of humans (led by Weaver) determined to fight back. There’s a lot going on in Rakka, and as the 20-minute film leaves tons of questions to be answered (as is probably its intention as it guns for a feature film pickup), fans are already flooding the comments to request further answers.

Watch Volume 1 of Rakka above.