The world of
Undergods is not a pretty one. Buildings are hollowed out and decrepit, the grime radiates off the streets, the sky is always a doom-and-gloom shade of grey. Then of course there’s the film’s welcome to the viewer: an introduction to the less-pleasant-looking – and probably smelling – K (Myers) and Z (Röhrig), partners in crime who drink gasoline and make a living collecting and selling dead bodies off the street. Not an ideal living but a normalized means of survival, which in this world is what’s most important.
K and Z are just the start of the eclectic inhabitants in this dreary European dystopia. The sort-of-anthology structure invites you into the lives of a collection of denizens, their stories not exactly intertwining, but more like each one passing the baton to the next. Each story finds its subjects contending with their increasingly cruel surroundings in vignettes that anchor them in ideas of greed, capital, and violence.