Undergods (2021)

Undergods is the kind of film that feels less like a story you follow and more like a dream you wake up from—uneasy, funny in a pitch-black way, and strangely beautiful. Chino Moya builds a crumbling near-future Europe out of stark images and surreal details, then threads together fable-like encounters that echo and rhyme until they start to feel like one haunted worldview. The pleasure here is the atmosphere and audacity: it’s stylish, ambitious sci-fi that uses fantasy logic to poke at power, control, and the stories we tell ourselves to feel safe. Fair warning, it’s bleak and occasionally brutal, so it won’t suit viewers looking for comfort—but if you like visionary cinema that lingers in your mind, this is absolutely worth the trip.

Undergods is aiming for a grim, surreal anthology about a decaying Europe, where dark comedy and fairy-tale cruelty blur into one long bad dream. The problem is it often feels more like a mood piece than a story: the nested tales can be uneven, meandering, and so deliberately opaque that you may stop caring before it all “connects.” If you like slow, art-house dystopias with bleak irony and symbolic violence, there’s striking imagery and a committed, eerie tone to latch onto. If you need clear character arcs, subtle themes, or a cohesive narrative engine, this will likely feel like it’s congratulating itself for being confusing rather than rewarding your time.