Mad God

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.

Mad God premiered at the Locarno Festival on August 5, 2021, and was released in the United States on June 16, 2022 by Shudder. It received critical acclaim.

Plot
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, he has a map and a suitcase.

Traveling through the underworld, he encounters many creatures mercilessly preyed upon by larger monsters. Eventually, he reaches a city which is home to an army of faceless drones, apparently ruled by a monstrosity with filthy teeth and seared flesh who only speaks in baby babble as it’s only seen as closeups of its eyes and mouth on screens attached to a tower. Deep within the city's bowels, the assassin discovers a mountain of suitcases just like his own. He opens his suitcase, 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 stripped in front of a mass of spectators. A surgeon appears with a nurse, splits open the assassin's abdomen, and begins rummaging through his chest cavity. 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 the last man gives a map forged by gnarled witches to an assassin and sends him down in a diving bell. Driving a motorcycle and then a jeep, the assassin follows the map 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 who escorts the child to an alchemist's lair. The alchemist grinds the infant into liquid, then alchemically transforms its remains 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 clock in the assassin's bomb appears to somehow restart and complete its circuit.

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.

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

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 91%, based on 91 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".

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".

The film was not without its detractors. IGN's Kristy Puchko gave a score of five out of ten, commending the atmosphere and visuals, but criticized the film for what she felt was the "lack of any real plot or substance".