The Spine of Night

Heck yeah! Very cool very brutal, old school violent dark fantasy stuff here. If you dug Fire and Ice this is your jam, bc these people clearly did. Looks and sounds great. Would have benefited from slightly peppier pace, but overall a very satisfying watch.

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.

The Spine of Night is an adult animated fantasy film and is a tale about a mysterious force, its influence over the ages and the ones who opposed it. Created in rotoscope style animation harkening back to classics such as The Lord of The Rings animated feature, I was both intrigued because of experiencing something different and worried because of the style of animation it is using as I'm not a fan but as it turns out, I don't mind it and got used to it fairly early on as the story and the world sank its teeth into me.

At about only 90 mins long, there is a lot in the plot in terms of thematical material whether its spirituality, Gods, the infinite spiral of existence, Death, cycles of humanity, the pursuit of knowledge and the ego and pride that can arise, and such that can make you ruminate all seamlessly embued into the story that is being told by a shaman/witch/sorcerer and in an entertaining fashion. It also felt fresh, something original amongst the sea of sameness and is what made me love this film.

Since it is an adult animated feature, it doesn't shy away from nudity and violence/gore, especially the latter of which there is an abundance, all well animated and gives a proper kick to the dark fantasy nature of the experience. Speaking of animation, the environment and objects were actually rendered beautifully and even though the character design and movement isn't something I'd considered attractive, it works and has its own fluid charm to it that comes with rotoscope animation.

The film boasts a talented voice acting cast although I certainly did not realize any one of them whether it's Lucy Lawless or Patton Oswalt or Richard E. Grant etc during watching it. It's not amazing but it is apt for the tone and style of the film and does its job i.e it's still good.

I'd wish it was slightly longer and delve a bit deeper into its characters since you hardly connect to most of them strongly as there isn't enough screentime for the majority, but still, overall, it was a great watch. Phillip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King along with the entire team did a wonderful job with this and I'd highly recommend it provided you're fine with the animation style and the adult nature of it. And if i were to rate it, I'd give it an 8/10.

Its an underrated animation movie,i can't understant the negative reviews Did you even bother watching it before writing the review?

Sure,the animation may look for some people "poor" but in my opinion it's not that bad and the storyline is very good.

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.