Mad God (2021)
There are films you admire enormously and films you love, and sometimes those two things refuse to overlap. Phil Tippett's Mad God sits squarely in the first category for me, and I've been wrestling with that ever since the credits rolled. It is, without any doubt in my mind, one of the most ambitious stop-motion projects ever committed to film. And yet, somewhere around the final act, I found myself checking how much time was left. That tension between awe and restlessness is what I keep coming back to.
The premise drops us into a nightmarish descent. A lone, shrouded figure, referred to as The Assassin, lowers himself from the heavens in a diving bell into a subterranean world teeming with monstrous creatures, industrial cruelty, and grotesque spectacle piled on top of grotesque spectacle. There's no conventional dialogue. No hand-holding. Just an unrelenting plunge into the fever-dreamed contents of Tippett's imagination, and what an imagination it is.
The craftsmanship here is, without exaggeration, staggering. Tippett spent decades building this decaying hellscape, and every single frame drips with tactile, practical detail. You can almost feel the grime under your fingernails just from watching it. This isn't the warm, charming whimsy of The Wrong Trousers, and it isn't the delicate arthouse abstraction of something like Blood Tea and Red String either. It's something far more raw and singular, a fully realised underworld that functions as a direct, unfiltered window into the mind of a filmmaker who has clearly been carrying this vision around for a very long time. Tippett's background as a visual effects legend is all over the screen, and you'd be a fool to deny the sheer achievement on display.
For the first stretch of the runtime, the film is genuinely overwhelming in the best sense. The density of the world-building, the bizarre creatures, the industrial horror of what's happening to the wretched souls populating this place, it all hits you in waves and leaves you slack-jawed. I was completely under its spell. Practical effects, done at this level of obsessive detail, still carry a weight and a texture that no amount of digital rendering can replicate, and Mad God proves that with every passing scene.
But here's where I have to be honest with myself. Once that initial shock appeal starts to wear off, the film has precious little else to hold you with. Because there's no real narrative engine driving things forward, no character arc to follow, no escalating tension in any traditional sense, the experience begins to flatten. What felt like bold, confrontational abstraction in the opening act starts to feel like repetition by the third. A brilliant, terrifying diorama, yes. But a diorama you can only stare at for so long before your eyes start to wander.
I've seen animation strip dialogue and conventional plot away to wonderful effect. I reviewed On-Gaku: Our Sound (2019), which uses minimalism and stillness to quietly devastating comic ends. The difference there is that the restraint feels purposeful and controlled, whereas Mad God's sparseness sometimes reads as the film having nothing more to say, just more to show.
And look, I don't want to be too hard on it, because what Tippett has pulled off here is genuinely monumental. This is an independent production driven almost entirely by one man's obsessive, decades-long commitment to a deeply personal vision. That kind of dedication commands real respect, and it shows in every grotesque, lovingly assembled frame. You absolutely should see this film, at least once, just to understand what human beings are capable of when they refuse to compromise.
Three stars.
A visually spectacular, gruelling descent that earns its place in animation history but struggles to justify quite how long it keeps you in the dark. A triumph of craft, a mixed experience as a film.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2021 | Watched: 2026-06-30
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder · Shudder Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · AMC+ Amazon Channel · AMC+ Roku Premium Channel · Shudder
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Physical: Amazon US
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