By Nicholas Ferweda
The mysterious and visually stunning dystopian world of Undergods is told through the vision of spanish filmmaker Chino Moya, in what could be considered a brave choice for a Directorial Debut.
Immediately, I found myself interested in learning more about this take of fantastical near-future europe. Undergods has a very strong opening ten minutes that does a good job at setting a dark and eerie tone using both cinematography and an original 80’s style synth score. Unfortunately it tends to fizzle out after the opening segment.
It’s formatted in a way that for moments left me wondering if this was originally intended to be an anthology. It’s told in segments taking place during different time periods. A lot of which don’t overlap with one another, because of this I find the plot really suffers and at times can almost be exhausting to try and understand. Certain parts of the story are easy to forget and lots of character arcs and plot points aren’t concluded which left me with more questions than answers at the end of the film.
Moya heavily relies on the use of cinematography to immerse his audience in the fictional world he’s created instead of making sure his story flowed in a way that made sense. There is way too much going on, I found myself not being able to care about any of the characters or their hardships because you don’t spend enough time with them. If Moya focused more on developing the world through his characters this film would have been a much more entertaining viewing experience.
Undergods does so much right, but unfortunately that can only take you so far.
Watch the trailer for Undergods below –
Bloody Flicks 