The Spine of Night

I have seen my fair share of animated movies - effortlessly more than 98% of casual viewers. To those who have worked on this movie - if you are reading this - bravo. The story is intriguing. The music spot on. This is obviously a work of passion and homage, but it already feels like one couldn't reliably date it, were it given to someone without telling them when it was produced. This movie will be found and enjoyed by those lucky and inquisitive enough for decades to come!

Going on a tangent: The warring Olympian-Titan myth in this movie is a gem. "The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death and the brighter the rebirth"

And a further side note: Sure, everyone reading this would have seen better animation and have heard a more memorable soundtrack - give me Hans Zimmer and the Ghibli Team and you'd get both. I can think of plenty of movies where the violence (animated or not) is "cool". There's nothing of the sort here.

Would it be too reductive to call this "Heavy Metal: Game of Thrones Edition"? Maybe. But it's a similar idea: using animation to tell a story with lots of violence and nudity, about an otherworldly power that sows corruption and misery across generations.

Here, we have less sex than Heavy Metal, more nudity, and way, way more gore. Combined with the rotoscoped animation, it's pretty strange and uncomfortable.

It's not necessarily hard to follow, but it is difficult to find much of a narrative here outside of watching people get eviscerated in different ways over thousands of years. A mile wide but an inch deep.

Still, the visuals are at least interesting, and I wasn't offended or anything. Just sort of disturbed and fascinated. There's value in that, I guess.

Morgan Galen King and Philip Gelatt's animated film is strictly for fans of fantasy epics and barbarian flicks, with a strong Conan the Barbarian vibe throughout - an epic tale of magic, bloodshed and tragedy as a cosmic flower of enlightenment from ancient Gods is used instead by tyrannical and megalomaniacal forces. Cue a centuries spanning saga of bloodcurdling violence, with witches, titans, kings and gods and all sorts of unworldly terrors and slaughter. The animators opt for rotoscoping for the human characters, and while some may find this jarring, I actually thought if fits very well with the story being told.

It's great, but only if this kind of tale is your cup of tea to begin with. Absolutely not for kids.

Terrific story... Terrific character design.... Terrific backgrounds... Terrific voice-overs...

Those who tell of poor animation are mistaken: the rotoscoping is great. Only of low quality is the uniform, shadeless colouring of bodies. If a stylistic choice, it fails; looks cheap; detracts from perfection.

The unpredictable, sharp, perfectly paced story makes this film better than its inspirations from the 80s. Remember, those were beautiful, but had mediocre writing at best.

This was good. Relentless pacing throughout. Original story and great voice acting. Violence with substance. Enjoyable watch and a gem amongst the void of useless rubbish put out nowadays. Glad I found it.