Exuding societal perversion, bloody corpses, and unimaginable creatures, Phil Tippett demonstrated the gnarliest elements of horror in his most recent release, Mad God. The film follows the main character, otherwise known as The Assassin, through the imagined underworld, where we are exposed to gruesome scenes of various tortured creatures. A unique aspect of the film is its lack of an obvious motive or a predictable progression, which is an unusual direction regarding plot maps.
With no dialogue and few characters, Mad God is the perfect concoction of sensory experiences for our ocular-oriented folks. Though computer-generated graphics are predominately preferred in modern animations, the grassroots nature of stop-motion techniques adds a physical realness and grit through the use of textural experimentation.
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Not for the faint of heart, the stylistic choices surpass anything currently in stop-motion horror, and the execution of material experimentation showed Tippett’s mastery in stop-motion production. For a 30-year project, Mad God is Tippett’s magnum opus. The vision festered inside of him while he worked on larger, popular productions such as RoboCop and Jurassic Park. After attempting to sell his concept to studios around the nation, with much rejection, Tippett took on this passion project with the help of self-funding and, eventually, crowdfunding. From the storyboard to post-production effects, Tippett takes the audience on a Miltonesque journey through the graphic layers of his perceived Hell.
Mad God’s Imagery Matters. A Lot.
Shudder
Mad God’s set design and overall hellish imagery ring anti-war themes by demonstrating the psychopathic nonchalance towards death and its frequent public occurrence. There is no law or order, and the creatures existing in this desolation are essentially born to die. While the plot can get lost in translation, the obvious lack of social fabric and morals is a prominent theme throughout the film.
Tippett took a nonconventional route when developing Mad God – he didn’t follow traditional plot maps. By taking on hyperbolic imagery and no dialogue to express the complexity of a lawless world, he successfully activated an ethos reaction within the audience. Though there is no explicable plot, the confusion pushes the audience to give the film a second or even third watch. After the second go-around, there is a realization that a plot isn’t needed to convey emotions, concepts, and character development.
The imagery is one-of-a-kind and resembles Tool music videos like no other – this can easily be attributed to Tippett’s lack of supervision and full-throttle creative freedom. The character design is incomparable to anything that exists today in stop-motion. Character builds included unusual material choices, such as vacuum lint or plasma-like goo, and also incorporated disgusting proportions. The development spans further than what is visually seen, as the audience is exposed to how these creatures are created – and ultimately, how they die.
A recurring example is the “Shmen,” faceless with no individual characteristics, who experience abuse from their supervisors, death from their work and environment, and ultimately, no perspective of a life outside of this. In one small scene, Tippett included an interaction between the Assassin and a child Shmen, where the use of sound demonstrated a sense of empathy for the little creature. Shortly after their connection, a torturous glob monster begins to whip and beat the child to its death. The phrase “Born to Die” was taken literally in this film. While Tippett has left the general philosophies up for interpretation, comparisons can be drawn to our reality with war-torn countries and corrupt leadership.
Feast Your Ears
Having no dialogue requires an extra emphasis on sound design, foley work, and score. Luckily for Tippett, Richard Beggs, sound designer for the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and more took on this project and developed some borderline offensive sounds. The guttural noises of the blood sloshing around, or the Surgeon pulling out the Assassin’s intestines, the characters’ unintelligible voices – it was important for Tippett to breach the boundaries of explicit terror by prioritizing surreal noises. From crying babies to explosive defecation, the intensity of these noises are familiar to us, but the magic here is that these are absolutely the most unappetizing and nauseating noises that could be burned into one’s head.
Analyzing humans’ adverse reactions to particular noises and incorporating this adds dimension to the hellish environments. Combined with viscous visuals, it’s a dynamic tour of the daunting crevices in Tippett’s mind. The cyberpunk industrial score pairs eloquently with the elaborate, cold worlds depicted. While there are a few musical components, it’s primarily a conglomeration of unsettling noises that adds an element of unseen discomfort.
Step Aside, Hollywood.
It’s true that there were several people who walked out on the initial screening of Mad God, but not because it was bad. Tippett asked viewers who walked out for their reasoning, and the majority of those people claimed it was stirring up some intense anxiety. The film surpassed the disgust threshold for traditional audiences and especially challenged horror fanatics. In an interview with Variety, Tippett elaborates:
“I was so disenfranchised with Hollywood filmmaking and what a pit it has driven itself into. Now, the nomenclature of the day is content, content, content, and it’s more like hot air, hot air, hot air. I wanted to make something that grabs people’s attention and takes you some place where you had never been before, and you have no idea where it’s going.”
From nightmarish sketches to 80 minutes of terrorizing art, Tippett shows his exemplary stop-motion mastery in developing this surreal production. This film has shimmied its way to being a notable animated horror film. While we may not see a sequel or another creation of such caliber, Mad God opens a door of inspiration for many filmmakers. Though dinosaurs and robots are out of Tippett’s future, this won’t be the last we see of him.
