Retro Review | The Never-Ending Madness of “Mad God”
Spoilers beware.
What happens when a veteran of the industry — in this case, Phil Tippet — unleashes his 30-year passion project unto the world of horror? You get Mad God, a Shudder original film that seemingly has no end to its brand of madness. The actual narrative of the film is borderline nonexistent, but that isn’t really the point of Mad God; instead, Phil Tippet’s magnum opus invites the viewer to form their own judgement of what everything means. Normally this points to the film being a lazy and pretentious think-piece, but this film in particular is the farthest thing from lazy.
In an apocalyptic future, a god-like being thrusts their wrath unto the human race, turning the planet into a hellish wastelands full of death and depravity. A man known simply as the assassin is sent down by the Last Man in an attempt to blow up the world below in order to end the suffering. In this world, monsters roam and butcher the unfortunate, slaves are made and tossed aside once their use has been fulfilled, and life tries to begin anew in its own twisted way.
Sorry if that sounds vague, but much of Mad God is purposefully vague. Instead of a conventional plot, Tippet’s film primarily focuses on the destructive cycle of humanity’s capability for violence and cruelty, shown in the seemingly endless levels that…
