Written and Directed by Phil Tippet
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 23 minutes
Streaming on Shudder/AMC+ June 16

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

Like Delta Space Mission that resurfaced earlier this year, Mad God is a work of art that needs no plot or explanation. Simply letting it wash over you, basking in its imagery is about all you really need to know in order to enjoy the film. There are strange creatures, an extended surgical sequence, and imagination working overtime to bask in pure creativity. It evokes similar feelings to that of animated shorts that appear on the Oscar season programs, a tone poem with the attitude of Heavy Metal magazine, appearing to be constantly dripping with goo.

Mad God is the passion project of legendary animator Phil Tippet. Over the course of his career, he has been a key element in some of the most beloved effects-heavy movies, from creating the animation for the chessboard in Star Wars, to inventing a new kind of stop motion for The Empire Strikes Back, to working with Paul Verhoeven on Robocop and Starship Troopers, as well as with Steven Spielberg on Jurassic Park. While he has spent a year creating works to serve the vision of other directors, Mad God gives him the opportunity to create a world from tabula rasa. He began working on it in 1990, during the production of Robocop 2, and has finished it over the past decade or so via crowdfunding.

While it plays in a fantasy/science fiction setting, there is a lot here that I’ve not personally seen before in terms of ideas and execution. The character designs and movement is stunning, and a clear mix of animation techniques as well as art styles converge here to create a nightmarescape. Were I forced to compare it to something, it is almost like imagining Conan the Barbarian navigate the version of Hell from Hellraiser 2 or Freddy’s nightmare domain. But that would undersell the unique qualities of the world Tippet has invited us into. Mad God never crosses over into nihilism, if only because every five minutes or so, there is more to be discovered. I sat in awe of the film, a darkly whimsical haunted house ride through Tippet’s entire career.

Thematically, if Mad God is about anything, it is about the pain of creation. The most common noise in the film’s soundscape is crying infants. Stop motion animation is a labor of love, especially doing it just for the love of it, but it is a painful labor, time consuming and requiring immaculate attention to detail. It is easy to imagine the metaphorical pain of trying to birth this film over the course of 30 years. Now we get to bask in that vision whenever we want. And you definitely should, after midnight, when it’s quiet and still except for the sound of your existential fears.