Undergods (2021)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Biting Tales

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The feature debut of Spanish artist and filmmaker Chino Moya, Undergods offers a relentlessly bleak, dystopian vision of some hellish near-future. The imagery recalls some of the darker moments of Roy Andersson, Terry Gilliam, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but much darker still.

It's a sort of anthology film, "hosted" by two men (Johann Myers and Géza Röhrig), who appear to be trashmen. But in fact their job is driving around, scooping up random dead bodies, and stacking them in the back of their truck.

From there, we move to a story of a run-down looking couple (Michael Gould and Hayley Carmichael) who receive a visit from a stranger (Ned Dennehy). He claims to be a neighbor, locked out of his apartment. They let him stay, and before long the stranger has seduced the wife and taken over.

Then, a shady businessman (Eric Godon) trying to steal a valuable invention from its creator (Jan Bijvoet), who, in turn, kidnaps the man's daughter (Tanya Reynolds).

This segueways, via a strange underground prison-like world, to our third story, another in which a third person (Sam Louwyck) intrudes upon a married couple (Adrian Rawlins and Kate Dickie, the latter of Andrea Arnold's Red Road); this time the intruder is the woman's former husband.

A tinny, electronic music score emphasizes the horror of it all.

What it all means is up for debate (a quick look at Rotten Tomatoes reveals theories about the Patriarchy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and Capitalism) but it nonetheless feels sharply relevant. It's probably no coincidence that one segment is framed as a bedtime story and another shows a character reading E.T.A. Hoffmann's tales. It could be as timeless as a fairy tale, or a nightmare.