Mad God Review

PLOT: Journey through a dystopian, monster-filled wasteland with the Assassin, Surgeon, Nurse, Alchemist, and the Last Human.

REVIEW: If you’re looking for a movie with a discernible plot, Phil Tippett’s stop-motion animated feature Mad God is not for you. In fact, this movie isn’t going to be for very many people at all. The average viewer is likely to switch it off after just a few minutes. Mad God is really an art piece to be marveled at, while being astounded that the artist could have this much otherworldly madness packed into their human mind.

We start off with a gas mask-wearing character called the Assassin, who follows a crumbling map into a dystopian world, descending deeper and deeper into a monster-filled waking nightmare. The further the Assassin goes, the crazier the visuals around this character get. There are tiny gnomes, disgusting creatures, slave workers that look like living hairballs, and giants strapped to electric chairs that have no center, like a toilet seat. They’re zapped so they’ll send a steady stream of feces flowing down into the mouths of monstrous heads situated below their chairs. Don’t get too concerned about the mission the Assassin is on, because soon enough the movie will remove this character and move on to something else – before coming back to the Assassin concept and sending another one on another mission.

This movie was crafted with a very cynical, fatalistic point of view. Everything is awful in its world, and when it shows a new world being created there’s no hope for it. Any world is simply fated to decay and become filled with more awful things. Tippett seems to have the same sort of negative view on the idea of workers and bosses. There are visuals throughout the movie that get across a critique of workaday activities. The hairball creatures are easily replicated, easily replaced, completely expendable. As they go about their tasks, there’s a strong probability that they’re going to be destroyed… and it doesn’t matter at all. Later we see monsters that spew explosions of feces, and there are other beings there who are supposed to wipe their dirty butts for them. But in the process of doing this, they might get taken down by another explosion of feces. We have workers literally getting shit on here.

Yes, in addition to the abundance of horrific creatures on display in Mad God, there are scatalogical visuals at multiple moments in this movie, bringing to mind the recent Troma release Shakespeare’s Shitstorm. There are also things like a masturbating doll and the sight of women giving a handjob to a creature with the head of a bull. This is as far from family friendly as you can get, so if you want to show your kids the wonders of stop-motion animation, don’t use Mad God as an example. Let them find this one on their own once they’ve reached adulthood.

But for those who are old enough and mentally prepared to watch it, Mad God is a dazzling artistic accomplishment. Tippett, who has provided visual effects work for the likes of Star Wars films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and RoboCop, just started making Mad God on his own when he had a break after working on RoboCop 2. This was a personal project, something to satisfy his creativity while he wasn’t making things for someone else. It’s mind-blowing to think that an endeavor like this would start off as a time killer. It was clearly a monumental task to take on, so it’s no surprise that Tippett abandoned it for a while – although the reason he did so was because he worked on Jurassic Park. When he saw the potential of computer effects, he figured stop-motion was dead. Mad God was shelved for twenty years before a new generation of effects artists discovered the materials Tippett had put together for it and persuaded him to finish the movie with their assistance (and some Kickstarter funding). Things came full circle when the pandemic hit and Tippett had to put the final touches on Mad God by himself. It’s awesome that, about thirty years after he started working on Mad God, he had the chance to complete the film and bring his full vision to the screen.

As a viewer, I didn’t have a great time sitting through Mad God. While I was always impressed that Tippett was able to pull off the things I was seeing on screen, the novelty wore off quickly. A clear story or some expository dialogue about what was happening would have helped hold my attention. I was left thinking that Mad God might have been more effective as a short film, or as a series of shorts, rather than being the 84 minute experience that it is. But Tippett’s vision was a feature, and I’m glad he was able to achieve it. This wasn’t something that was meant to entertain the masses, or even me. Mad God will certainly find viewers who love sitting through its 84 minutes and being wowed by its visuals, but primarily it serves as a reason to be happy for Phil Tippett. He imagined this world, he had the opportunity to bring it to life, and now his movie is completed. I didn’t enjoy all of it, but I’m glad it exists.

Mad God will be available to watch on the Shudder streaming service as of June 16th. The film will also be receiving a limited theatrical release on that date.

Mad God

BELOW AVERAGE

5