Hi! You’re reading an entry in the Jscars 2022, a series on my favorite movies of the year 2022. Go to my profile to view the previous entries!
“If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over.”
Animation is a topic I’m pretty passionate about. Like many other people online, I find myself waving the banner of “animation’s not just for kids” fairly often, trying desperately to change the preconceived notion that the medium isn’t suitable for adults. But there’s a simple fact I also have to face: Most animation movies that get major releases are, in fact, kids’ movies. That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with them, one or two I’ve already given entries here in the Jscars. But it can be difficult sometimes when you’re seeking out something more mature from the animated medium and most of the time all you have is media for children that happens to deal with a few themes that are slightly darker than one would expect. Well, now we have the exact opposite. An animated film so dark and gross that anyone who watches it might think that no child should ever watch an animated film again. And thank god we do.
Mad God is the passion project of Phil Tippett, known for his visual effects work on movies such as RoboCop and Jurassic Park. The film had been in production for around 30 years by the time it finally came out, and based solely on the craftsmanship on display, the wait was worth it. As we follow the journey of the figure at the center of the film’s narrative through a strange world with no dialogue, each scene clearly had an immense amount of work and passion put in, regardless of how gruesome and gross it might be. Actually, the more gruesome and gross it is, the more work and passion was likely put in. It genuinely feels somewhat impossible that a movie like this came out today, feeling way more like something you saw years ago and you have a foggy recollection of now. But it’s real, every single moment of beautifully animated of gore, fecal matter and torture. If all of that sounds completely unappealing, as it will to most people, then you probably won’t enjoy this. But if you’re a weirdo like me, you’ll feel right at home.
But it’s not just the imagery and effort that made me fall in love with this movie. For a movie with absolutely zero dialogue, there’s a lot of rumination on the nature of humankind and civilization, and whether or not we’re able to actually live together without devolving into conflict. Some critics of the movie actually complained that there was no narrative or themes present in the movie at all, which is just totally wrong. Every moment of brutality, no matter how senseless and pointless it may seem, serves in building up to one of the film’s final moments, where everything beautifully clicks together all at once.
I have chosen to refrain from sharing too many specifics in this entry, both for the sake of people who would be grossed out at them, as well as the possible who are even a little bit interested in checking this out. If that’s you, I can not recommend doing so as quickly as possible enough, and doing so a blind as possible. Mad God is a type of cinematic experience that I don’t know that we’ll get much more of, if we ever get something like it again. We should treasure it while we can.