Phil Tippett’s Mad God - A Disappointing Passion Project

In most cases, a good Sci-Fi film is built around great visual effects. For instance: Jurassic Park (1993), RoboCop (1987), and Return of the Jedi (1983) have one thing in common, amazing visuals, and Phil Tippett as the VFX supervisor and producer.

Tippett’s work in the movie industry has been renowned and awarded multiple times. His ‘creature design’ has become a trademark of his remarkable work, making him one of the best VFX artists of a generation. His talent has been requested in different types of media throughout his career, which as good as may sound, made him push his very own passion project to a three decade old deadline. But after thirty years, Mad God was finally released to the horror genre in 2021, making it a very waited feature film amongst his fans, and the scary movie enthusiasts. But was it really worth the wait?

The short answer: NO.

Why? Well, even though the movie appears to be visually entertaining, there’s not plot, no real characters, no real message… the movie is as empty as it seems. It really is disappointing, especially when it comes from a very deep and passionate place in Tippett’s heart, but there’s a very big difference in being good, and trying to appear as good. Mad God is bad, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The movie tries so hard on being fantastic and tries to bring new things to the table. But, instead of doing so, it feels like watching someone cut grass with nail clippers.

I remember watching the movie with my brothers, and coming to the conclusion that it was easily the worst film we’ve watched the whole year (and that’s saying a lot). I couldn’t stop thinking of how much he was trying to copy David Lynch, or so it seemed. The animation is good, and the world that Tippett created is very ad-hoc to what the story is trying so hard to convey. Nevertheless, the vast void, and lack of real characters and plot, make the movie unbearable to enjoy.

This movie looks like the creation of a small child using all of his toys, an old camera, fake blood, and combining everything in a dark room whilst trying to portray a serious topic. This is like Toy Story, but gory, bad, and without good voice actors. It’s pointless, grim, and outright boring.

Alas, I was really disappointed with how bland the whole movie feels. I feel like someone on Tippett’s caliber should deliver something more meaningful. Some may say that having such a huge gap (thirty years) could make it very difficult to compose a feature film, let alone direct, produce, edit and release. Still, that should never be an excuse of how bad this movie ended up being.

I gave this movie a 3/10. And honestly, looking back at it, the score should’ve been lower.