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Mad God Movie Review

Mad God is a 2022 stop-motion animated experimental horror film written and directed by Phil Tippett. It is a flick that offers a highly artistic, but devoid of meaning viewing experience.

A figure known as “The Assassin” descends from the heavens into a nightmarish pit full of monsters, titans and cruelty. Tippett is a filmmaker who’s been in the stop-motion business for quite some time and this is his personal project that he’s been working on for decades. The result is this highly unique, epic and impressively ambitious animated film, but one that lacks any soul or real plot.

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Unlike Tartakovsky’s ‘Primal’ that was similar in its world building and savage brutality, this movie takes a nihilist, pessimist take on humanity, but it also has no proper story to speak of, which personally bothered me. It’s a story that is heavy on symbolism and meticulous details, but it’s such a visual overload of ideas, creatures and effects that every sequence becomes a movie in and of itself, but we never get any proper explanation for any of these multitude of scenarios and details, just a small tidbit of information that did not suffice.

With that being said, where Mad God excels at is in the animation side of things. This is undoubtedly one impressively artistic, gorgeous-looking feast for the eyes with such accomplished stop-motion techniques that will impress even the most hardened viewers out there. The creature designs are immaculate while the vistas are both colorful and uniquely dark.

The problem with the film is its overly gruesome nature. It is a horror story, yes, but the body horror elements were simply too grotesque to comprehend. There is this one body butchering sequence that was so long and so horribly graphic that it was nauseating to bear. This extreme level of gore did make the movie admirably mature and intimidating in its atmosphere, but it led to far from a pleasant viewing experience.

The sound was evocative and the score was terrific here, but the film is otherwise silent as it lacks any dialogue. This was a great choice as it made the movie highly atmospheric, but the repetitiveness of its scenarios did make the film a bit monotonous, especially for those who aren’t as artistically-inclined. It’s an admirable experiment, but one that lacks heart.

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Mad God is Phil Tippett’s passion project – an epic experimental stop-motion horror movie that is admirably ambitious, but one that lacks soul or any plot to begin with. It’s a monotonous, overly grotesque and gory movie, but the visual details are mesmerizing, especially the creature designs. The approach with no dialogue also paid off and its dangerous atmosphere was another plus. It’s a film that is easy to admire, but difficult to love.

My Rating – 3.5