Undergods

Undergods starts with K and Z, a pair of corpse collectors trolling the bombed out streets of a European city in a dystopian future. Although this was shot before the Ukraine war, the setting could easily be Bakhmut or any city in the Ukrainian east today. Were the writers prophetic?

From there the story bounces about into thinly connected mini-stories, back to the past, the present, and even into what may be alternative worlds (or is it K's and Z's imagination).

The next story is of a couple, the only residents in a new, sterile apartment tower, who are tricked in to allowing a stranger to board with them for a weekend. Needless to say, bad things happen.

We quickly segue into another tale -- there is a thread-like connection --- this one of a father who tells scary bedtime stories to his young daughter.

One story is about a greedy merchant whose love of money causes him to cheat an old eccentric inventor out of a mysterious machine that might make him rich. The setting looks to be Serbia, circa 1980s. The run-down art deco office building is amazing.

From there we jump -- again there is a connection with the last story -- to a hellish underworld of the future where slave labor is the norm. And then on to a man, dressed in slave attire, who returns home to the present after a long absence to find that his wife has moved on with her life. Chewing gum and a lottery actually figures into this segment. Then back to K and Z.

The Undergods is a dark and disturbing film, creepy even, yet it is also powerful and thought-provoking. The film explores themes of alienation, despair, loyalty, love of family, and the nature of power. It's a film that will stay with you long after you watch it.

The set designs, the overall visual style are stunning. Everything is grey, depressing, or in the "today" segments, cheap and artificial looking. The humor is dark and very twisted often with a dagger like edge.

The characters are complex, and for the length of the movie surprisingly well fleshed out. Their motives are, for the most part, clear and you feel their torment, their alienation and despair.

This is NOT a film for everyone. But if you like dark, strange fantasy, yes, give it a watch.

Good looking, in a gloomy sort of way, short stories cleverly and randomly connected to each other. It's very well directed and acted without any real focal point other than the future looks mighty grim. It's a somewhat hypnotic film that offers many impressive visuals, but they are nearly all dark, violent, depressing or evil. I can't say I "enjoyed" it, but it is an interesting, cheerless, and somewhat miserable journey.

First and foremost, acting is good and directing is excellent. So it has a solid foundation. The story is an anthology that loosely threads together tales of suffering manifesting within different environments. I'm still unsure if I enjoyed it. Perhaps some films are not meant to be merely enjoyed but to arouse contemplation. Either way, I'm interested to see what Chino Moya makes in the future, provided there is one.

This film is a dark satirical dream of interwoven stories within a dystopian hellhole. It's a grim fairytale book of Orwellian doom yet oddly hilarious at times. Undergods is flawlessly written, perfectly casted, creatively scored and a true hidden gem of cinema. The world parallels our own with its depiction of "normal" society in which a mistake could easily kill you or throw you into the dark hell of society's underbelly. A place unthinkable until you are trapped within that nightmare. I truly hope that one day this beautiful masterpiece will find its proper place within the halls of cult cinema.

The oddest thing about this film to me was how heavily it borrowed from Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future. A whole section of it was almost a straight lift from Bruegel and Mahler cruising the ruins in search of lucrative deposits to be cashed in at Nightingales Body Bank. This couldn't have been an accident, as the end theme music was almost identical. Elsewhere it was a hotchpotch of borrowed themes, probably starting at Eraserhead and working its way through any number of long-forgotten dark films and TV episodes.

Of the cast, only Johann Myers was immediately recognisable to me, from his underplayed yet still chilling role as David Harewood's enforcer in the truly terrifying Criminal Justice. One or two others looked vaguely familiar, probably having bit-parts in The Bill in the 1980s. This didn't matter, as no stars were needed or even wanted in this film, for which the main requirement was to invest in the project with the slightly bewildered detachment required to pull it off. The party scene was strangely reminiscent of the currently popular style of many TV comedies, which instead of good old-fashioned jokes, rely on provoking feelings of extreme embarrassment and discomfort.

The film itself seems to have come to life in a strange and unusual way, being an Estonian project but using a mixture of British and European actors with National Lottery Funding. I thought the original Max Headroom film was a ground breaking classic, but I can't make my mind up whether it being flattered in this way should be viewed in a positive or negative way. I can't even make my mind up whether being a homage to one of my favourite films made me mark it up or down.