With a Kafkaesque sense of disorientation, the characters in this movie descend into despair and chaos, largely due to letting a stranger into their lives. A stark warning that what can appear brutal and distant, can be disturbingly familiar at the same time. Mixing genres, Moya carefully combines a sci-fi fictional element with fantasy and, as the ‘Screendaily’ review described it, “There’s barely a frame of the film that would not stand on its own”.
Having emerged from a background of award- winning commercials and music videos (see ‘Digital Witness’ for St Vincent) and nominations for his short films, Chino Moya is making an impact with this first feature. He has been supported by the British Film Institute, and among others Scott Free. Ridley Scott’s company. Shot largely in Estonia and Serbia, the visuals and production design stand out as being truly stunning. With the music's persistent beats and rhythms that are both mesmerising and ominous, all these elements become characters in their own right.
K (Johann Meyers) and Z ( Géza Röhrig)
‘Undergods’ is built up from 3 main interwoven tales, linked by two wonderfully colourful characters simply named ‘K’ (Johann Meyers) and ‘Z’ ( Géza Röhrig), who wander about the devastated landscapes in their battered truck picking up dead bodies and, when they hit the jackpot, some live ones that can be sold for meat. Like Shakespearean characters, as they struggle to survive, K and Z lament the ills of the world with sardonic humour.
The three main stories have a fairy-tale quality, partly linked by vignettes. One is of Octavius (Khalid Abdalla) with a child Horatia (Maddison Whelan) who insists her bedtime stories must include some good monsters. At least, when he agrees, he expresses some warmth, so absent in the other relationships.
The tales also blend by theme. The characterless lives of the three main male characters are not that different in that their relatively safe, if loveless, lives are completely destroyed, in part through flaws in their characters that precipitates their fall. The moral of the stories is that it is definitely inadvisable to allow strangers to get too close, or worse, to try to cheat them. Moya questions who, if anyone, has a better deal, those living comfortable but empty lives or those abandoned men in holes in the ground, that wait to be worked to death or eaten. It is a bleak world.
Michael Gould as Ron
There is a lurking religious undertone that echoes the woes of the deadly sins. We see them in action: greed, covetousness, lust, anger and vanity, sins that cry to heaven.
Do you believe in God? A character asks.
One apparently happy couple, Ron (Michael Gould) and Ruth (Hayley Carmichael) allow their ‘neighbour’ (a charismatic Ned Dennehy) to stay overnight, because he claims he has locked himself out of his apartment. This neighbourly generosity is sorely abused, as the neighbour will not remove his foot from the door, threatening Ron’s very existence.
Jan Bijvoet as the Foreigner
In the second tale, a rich and greedy Hans (Eric Godon) tries to double-cross a clever foreign engineer (Jan Bijvoet) who brings him the blueprints of his invention, when he is seeking a sponsor. The engineer twigs he is being cheated and exacts his revenge on the family, in particular Hans’ beloved daughter María (Tanya Reynolds).
Katie Dickie as Rachel
The third story is about Dominic (Adrian Rawlins). Despite being a talented engineer, he is badly bullied and humiliated by his boss Tim (Burn Gorman). When a catatonic ex-husband Sam (Sam Louwyck) re-emerges from the dead after 15 years, his wife Rachel (a very creepy Katie Dickie) feels obliged to have him live with them and their son Will (Jonathan Case). Even though this ‘stranger’ is, in a sense, legit, the impact on their lives is totally devastating.
Undergods (2020)
The film, riding high on its powerful visuals, speeds along effortlessly taking the audience with it. Perhaps too effortlessly. There is the danger of being slick with neat solutions and this somehow detracts from the emotional impact, although at no point does it cease to be totally entertaining and enthralling.
‘Undergods’ (2020) premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival 2020, where it was nominated for the Cheval Noir. It has also been nominated for Best Production Design and Best Effects at the British Independent Film Awards 2021 and for the New Director Competition at the Cleveland International Film Festival 2021.
‘Undergods’ (2020) is coming to select cinemas and digital outlets, On Demand, from May 17th 2021.
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Credits
Writer/Director Chino Moya
Producer Sophie Venner
Cinematography David Raedeker
Editors Walter Fasano, Maya Maffioli, Tommaso Gallone
Production design Marketa Korinkova
Music Wojciech Golczewski
Main cast: Géza Röhrig, Johann Myers, Ned Dennehy, Michael Gould, Hayley Carmichael, Khalid Abdalla, Eric Godon, Jan Bijvoet, Tanya Reynolds, Tadhg Murphy, Sam Louwyck, Adrian Rawlins, Kate Dickie, Burn Gorman
