Mad God

Plot

The film opens with the silhouettes of people building and climbing their way up a tall tower reaching towards the heavens. The skies are red and stormy, and the tower is struck down. The text of the Bible passage Leviticus 26:27-33 is shown, followed by the name of the film.

A tall figure shrouded in a jacket and gas mask, credited as the Assassin, descends into a ruined, hellish world via a diving bell. In his possession are a map and a briefcase.

Traveling through the underworld, he encounters many creatures mercilessly preyed upon by larger monsters and elaborate machines of torture and death. Eventually, he reaches a city which is home to an army of faceless drones constructed from feces. The drones mindlessly tend to physically laborious tasks, regularly dying in the process. When they begin to hear the cries and babbles of a baby, they abandon their tasks and wander towards the source: a tower holding up screens displaying closeups of the being's eyes and bloody mouth. The Assassin joins them, and briefly stares at a lone drone, but retreats into a trap door when he witnesses a bipedal monstrosity beat and stomp on it repeatedly. Deep within the city's bowels, the Assassin discovers a mountain of briefcases just like his own. He opens his briefcase, revealing a time bomb, which he places and prepares to set off. He fails to notice a creeping monster behind him, which then attacks and drags him away as the bomb's ticking hand appears unable to complete its circuit.

The Assassin is shackled to a table and skinned in front of a mass of spectators watching the silhouette in a theater and laughing. He is revealed to be in a hospital room; one of many fully skinned and bandaged figures laying on an operating table. His exposed, bloodshot eye glances around, noticing the shadows of people in the hallway. A surgeon enters the Assassin's room with a nurse, cuts open the Assassin's abdomen, and begins rummaging inside. Jewelry and papers are pulled out and thrown to the floor. Eventually, the surgeon finds his goal: a strange, wailing, infant larva-like creature. The surgeon hands it to the nurse, who carries it away.

The surgeon bores a hole in the Assassin's head and connects his brain to a television set. As the surgeon watches the television, the world above is shown, where a man known as the Last Man puts on a yarmulke and black slippers and looks under a table, where there are three gnarled witches cutting a string. They hand the Last Man a map who walks into a large room filled with figures dressed like the Assassin standing at attention. He gives it to the Assassin who is waiting in the diving bell in the center of the room. The Assassin takes it and descends to a ruined city where he checks his map. He grabs a nearby motorcycle which he rides until it breaks down, only then driving what is seemingly a rusted light utility vehicle. The Assassin follows the map descending through thousands of years of carnage and filth created by war, through a munitions depot, a graveyard and a war zone before descending a spiral roadway.

Back in the underworld, the nurse brings the infant to a ghostly, floating creature in Plague Doctor's garb, who escorts the child to an alchemist's lair. The alchemist grinds the infant into a powder, then alchemically transforms this powder into gold. This gold is then used to create a new cosmos which undergoes the same cycle of evolution, civilization and self-destruction as the previous one. In doing so, the Assassin's bomb's countdown concludes, and time rapidly progresses, with all kinds of clocks, hourglasses, and candles suddenly shifting forward.

Production

While working on RoboCop 2, Tippett began filming what would become Mad God. His work on Jurassic Park led him to believe the days of stop-motion were over, and the film was shelved.

Twenty years later, with the encouragement of members of his studio, Tippett began working on the project again, utilizing crews of volunteers to assist him.

"So on the weekends I would get as many as 15 and 20 people coming round. They didn't all have the talent or skill, but I'd figure out the processes during the week. I had them do all the heavy lifting."

With aid from Kickstarter donations, Tippett created the first three sections, which make up about half of the film. He released a behind-the-scenes footage on YouTube during production.

Sound design

In 2013, Academy Award-winning sound designer Richard Beggs agreed to do the project's sound design and mixing.

VR-short

In 2016, a two-minute short VR-version (Virtual Reality-version) of the movie was released. All characters were animated and shot separately in front of a green screen using Dragon software; then Nuke was used to compose all the characters together in front of a background.

Music

The original score was composed by Dan Wool, who started work on the project in 2010 and developed the score in chapters until the release in 2021. The soundtrack album, released by Waxwork Records, was released June 21, 2022 on double-vinyl and CD.

In 2023 Wool released an alternative digital-only version of the soundtrack album, "Soundtrack for Phil Tippett's MAD GOD - Music+Effects Version [feat. Richard Beggs]", incorporating more of Richard Beggs' sound design for MAD GOD. It is available on Bandcamp.

Release

Mad God premiered at the 74th Locarno Film Festival on August 5, 2021. Shudder acquired its distribution rights, planning a limited release in theaters and on AMC+ on June 16, 2022.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, the film earned $8,416 from two theaters in its opening weekend. It expanded to 26 theaters in its second weekend and made $36,588. It added $24,451 in its third weekend, $37,617 in its fourth, and $16,280 in its fifth, ultimately grossing more than double its $150,000 budget in its limited theatrical release.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Mad God holds an approval rating of 92%, based on 95 reviews, and an average rating of 7.8/10. Its consensus reads, "A rich visual treat for film fans, Mad God proves that even in the age of CGI, the cinematic allure of stop-motion animation remains strong." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times described the film as "a vivid and valuable showcase for disappearing skills". Carlos Aguilar wrote a profile of Tippett and the production of Mad God – "the most complete expression of his erudite image-making expertise" – in the same publication.

John Defore of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film's animation, bleak atmosphere and design, calling it "a tech achievement FX geeks will need to see", and "among the bleakest dystopias [of] science fiction". Sight and Sound's John Bleasdale offered similar praise while also criticizing its bleak setting, summarizing that the film "has all the makings of an instant cult classic". Scoring the film four out of five stars, Drew Tinnin from Dread Central praised the design, atmosphere and animation, as well as the film's soundtrack, calling it "sheer artistry coming to life".

Rafael Motamayor of IndieWire rated the film a B, writing "Mad God, a cacophony of savagery and cruelty– [offering] no hope, no respite from the awe-inspiring terror." Nerdist's Kyle Anderson rated the film a score of 4.5 out of 5, offering similar praise to the film's atmosphere, visuals, bleak setting, and production design while noting the film's simplistic narrative. Reviewing for Tilt Magazine, critic Thomas O'Connor called the film "a deeply unsettling spectacle", highlighting the film as a technical achievement in stop-motion animation, as well as praising the film's bleak atmosphere and disturbing imagery.

Christopher Stewardson from Our Culture Magazine rated the film four out of five stars, commending the animation, visual design, hellish atmosphere, and dream-like quality, writing "Mad God almost has an anti-war ring to it. In its abstract madness, it presents the nightmare of what war does. Nobody is human. Only monsters exist".