Attempting to describe the narrative of Mad God is an exercise in futility as there is no story in the traditional sense. Rather, it is presented as a travelog without character or commentary, an unfettered journey through a hellscape long devoid of meaning or any honest attempts to ascertain it. Perhaps, it’s just the opposite, a world wholly focused on the pursuit of meaning but finding itself so far afield of any means of achieving it that all that remains is a pitiful cargo cult, cut off from purpose and rationality yet awe-inspiring in the machinations constructed to further its unknowable goal.

Our protagonist, insomuch as Mad God has one, is nameless, faceless, genderless, fully clad in a thick suit of metal plate to obscure any lingering humanity. They are little more than a means of conveyance, a focal point as we drift further down into the depths of this organic machine and seem almost a ghost, unchallenged by the capricious barbarism erupting behind every corner. We are left to interpret what their mission might be as they follow an indecipherable map that continues to disintegrate along with our feeble attempts to follow it while the very structure of the world contorts our perceptions of reality as the massive and the minuscule are brought together to magnify its disharmony. 

The majority of Mad God is shot in stop motion with miniatures but this format is broken in bold, if not always effective, ways, giving the cinematography itself great variety in its use of scale. At times, the use of miniatures is unobscured and gives the feeling of viewing a perverse diorama, at others, the megalithic scale is the unyielding structure the viewer feels as hopeless to escape as those that inhabit it. Between these two seemingly mutually-exclusive perspectives, there exists a third that is perhaps its most compelling, a feeling of microscopic expansiveness where we become ants lost in a labyrinth of twisting burrows. 

Mad God is a truly unique viewing experience helmed by a master of his craft and while there were lulls that had me glancing at how much time I had left to spend in its hopeless and nihilistic world, it always managed to find some new depravity to pull me back in. The deviations from the miniature worlds to the use of live actors feel less effective, not because the art direction is lacking but because the grounding found in seeing a recognizable human pulls us away from the incomprehensible fever dream found everywhere else. The score is also a bit uneven, with most of what we hear reflecting the deep resonances of these massive spaces and the animalistic wailing of their inhabitants but its attempt at an actual score feels inoffensive but somewhat arbitrary. In some other universe, this is a modern take on The Wall with the auditory bombast and musical movements to give it form and contour. Mad God isn’t that, though, it is an abstract journey into a world that begs you to escape before you’re consumed while captivating with its horrific beauty.

8.5 out of 10