Told with no dialogue and a few grunts from Alex Cox's mad scientist character – though with lashings of wailing from a crying baby – it's all purposely obtuse, grisly and grating.
The stop-motion surreal horror movie Mad God has been described in many reviews as one of the most bizarre and inscrutable movies in recent memory. With no dialogue Mad God's narrative is communicated entirely through visuals and action.
A blend of stop-motion puppetry and live action—though probably not in the ways you might expect—Mad God is a mostly-silent film set in a post-apocalyptic “atompunk” hellscape that may or may not be some actual version of Hell.
Mad God is a disturbing testament to why we love horror. It's honest, brutal, and unrelenting; it often depicts the underbelly of humanity and the world around us, practically begging us to look for hope in a mad, mad world.
To me however, I think the entire film is a philosophical mediation on how we can account for and justify the concept of a god in the world we live in. I think the film states that it's in our nature and the nature of everything around us to decay. I think that man sending the assassins clearly is the "mad god".
PHIL TIPPETT Interview | Making Stop-Motion Epic 'Mad God'
What is the point of the Mad God movie?
Mad God is a stop-motion nightmare, an imparting of forbidden knowledge that warps the notion of hope completely out of existence. The film reads like a Boschian painting, a voyeur's dream, and a dire warning all at once.
There is a surgery scene which is very bloody and graphic. Holes are punctured in a patient as well as organs being ripped out and blood splatter across the room. Very violent scene.
It's equally bizarre, grotesque, dreary, and horrifying, but it's also compelling from start to finish. It's not for the faint of heart with some truly nasty imagery, but it is a masterpiece of visual storytelling.
“Mad God” has been 30 years in the making, and the dedication to the grotesque and disturbing permeates throughout the movie. To put it bluntly; this movie is horrific in every way possible. It's gross, absurd, super violent, torturous, vulgar and just about anything else you can mention.
The meticulous stop motion animation that is currently selling the film to contemporary audiences was something that Tippet believed he could not market to studios back in the 90s - a time when cutting-edge CGI was on the rise. As such, the project was shelved by Tippett for the better part of 30 years until recently.
Mad God is a 2021 American stop-motion adult animated experimental horror film written, produced, and directed by Phil Tippett. Completed in 2021, it was produced over a period of 30 years.
For most of the movie's runtime, though, Mad God — which after all is about a man descending into the depths of the earth to a nightmarish realm below — is also an almost step-by-step interpretation of Dante's Inferno. In this post, I'm going to trace out those steps, and show how Dante's work structures Tippett's own.
b&a: I think what's always fascinated me in particular about MAD GOD, is that it isn't just one thing. Even though people talk about it as stop-motion, which of course it is, it's a mix of things. How did you think it might ultimately be described?
Stop-motion is about bringing an inanimate object to life. There's almost a black-arts quality to stop-motion, this idea of conjuring things, bringing things back to life. It's like necromancy. It has this current of dark, strange things running underneath it.
After being attacked by a monster and dragged away, the assassin is subjected to a surgical procedure in which a creature is removed from his chest and a hole is bored into his head.
Review: Mad God Is an Hour-and-a-Half-Long '90s Tool Video. There's a scene in Phil Tippet's epic stop-motion movie Mad God where main character The Assassin is thrown into a world of abject horror.
Blood and gore is shown, although the film is in black & white. Also, a female character is shown watching the same movie, and a bit is shown where a zombie eats a large insect. A young boy in a movie theater watches a film where we see a girl's head being chopped off.
Ethnic and racial slurs are heard, as well as some profanity, including the "N" word. The movie also depicts Italian American culture in a sympathetic but crude and stereotypical light. Characters smoke cigarettes and drink wine, and there's brief nudity (female breasts) and a scene of clothed but audible sex.
This game is honestly a really good game and there is barely any swearing and the only reason I gave this game 12+ is because it had a bit too much gore for anyone younger.
