Mad God

2021, 83min

Phil Tippett

Now streaming on Shudder  

I remember seeing an early short of this as part of an art or film program (search me if you ask where it was though, it was probably one of my weirdo “new age” art retreats, hahaha!) In any case, I’m thrilled to see a budget finally materialized to take this further. Love seeing an artist get to express themselves this way. But man oh man, is it weird and disgusting and utterly confusing as a whole movie. More than once while watching this I had questioned if I missed any required caption noting that the consumption of mind-altering substances was required for viewing, but then I realized that might make everything worse, hahaha!

 Don’t get me wrong, this feature-length film done entirely in stop motion is the most incredible feat of filmmaking and physical artistry I’ve seen in ages, but somehow it’s also one of the most aggravating and nearly-unwatchable as a “narrative”. This movie is almost entirely void of a chronological story and has little by way of dialogue to help clarify, which is going to infuriate a litany of audience members. The scrolling story text in the beginning attempts to lay groundwork, but unless you’re interested in pausing it ten times to read it slowly to try and decode a narrative, it’s useless; frankly to try to see It as anything but a purely artistic response comprised of terrifying imagery to a violent world? It’s nonsensical.

So I chose to simply measure it as a piece of performance art instead of any sort of chronological storytelling, and from that perspective it then becomes an incredibly successful poetic warning to a modern society obsessed with consumerism and consumption and who exhibits such consistently careless chaos and destruction. It warns us that we are losing our humanity in our quest for power, becoming monsters of disgusting proportion, doomed to repeat the cycle of misery until we fully destroy everything good, realizing all too late that material goods and authoritarian ideas of “power” ultimately mean nothing in the grand scheme. It’s an unconventional delivery of an age-old theme, but then again, after hundreds of years of society losing the plot as a whole, perhaps this “plotless” smorgasbord of disgust is the only thing we have left as a vehicle to drive the point home… how distressing!

If you’re interested in surrealist, non-linear storytelling and experimental film and music, and aren’t afraid of bodily fluids and the abysmally grotesque, then this is for you. If you want plot or story, dialogue, and visuals that enhance the story mechanism, or even if you’d just like to keep your lunch firmly ensconced in your belly, skip it. I personally will never be upset that I was given the opportunity to have this grace my eyeballs, but I’m sure that I won’t watch it again any time soon. One can appreciate art and respect creative process without actually enjoying the final product personally, and that about sums up how I feel about this fascinatingly grotesque surrealist animated feature. 

I received a screener for review.

CW/TW:  Immensely disgusting bodily fluids, lots of flashing and strobing lights, disturbing visuals, sexually suggestive imagery, violent imagery, vomiting, body horror, military and war themes, disturbing noises and squelching sounds, animal death, pooping, capital punishment, murder and stabbing


Review by Ellen AviglianoTwitter: @imaginariumartzwww.imaginariumarts.com