An otherworldly journey through a Europe in decline – a collection of darkly humorous, fantasy tales about ill-fated characters and doomed fortune.

I’ve seen quite a few weird movies this year already and ‘Undergods’ is the latest movie to join that category, an odd little movie that follows two bagmen who drive around a post-apocalyptic city collecting dead bodies. They are K (Johann Myers) and Z (Géza Röhrig) and their journey is the framing device that director Chino Moya uses as a jumping off point to tell a series of dark fables set in the recent past, prior to whatever events occurred to turn the world into a barren wasteland.

The movie is structured as a series of vignettes that focus on different characters who are having very bad days, sometimes driven by their own actions, sometimes not, and with each new tale, the stories become increasingly nightmarish and fantastical. The segments are deftly linked together through K and Z’s travels and I particularly liked the cool score that gives the movie a retro feel, even as I struggled to connect with the movie on the whole. It’s skillfully packaged by Moya and well performed by the cast (Ned Dennehy in particular is an unsettling presence in the opening sequence), but it never grabbed me as much as I had hoped it would.

‘Undergods’ is a well made dystopian drama that is as unsettling as much because the world it portrays so closely resembles our own, than through some of its more macabre elements. It suggests a real talent in director Chino Moya but I was only partially drawn in to its unconventional approach.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Chino Moya

Starring: Johann Myers, Géza Röhrig, Michael Gould, Hayley Carmichael, Ned Dennehy, Khalid Abdalla, Eric Godon, Tanya Reynolds, Kate Dickie, Tadhg Murphy, Jan Bijvoet, Sam Louwyck and Adrian Rawlins

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt8043434/