The Spine of Night

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.

I stumbled upon the 2021 animated adventure back in 2021, but I didn't sit down to watch it back then, as I must admit that I just didn't find any appeal in the art style used to bring the tale alive on the screen. Then I stumbled upon it again in 2022, and I opted to sit down and watch it this time.

And I will say that "The Spine of Night" was interesting. It was a rather nicely well-written tale of magic and malevolence. And it certainly is something that will find some appeal with fans of the fantasy and adventure genres, especially so if you are familiar with role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and such.

The storyline, as written by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, was actually enthralling and had lots of interesting contents to it. Keep in mind, though, that this is not an animated movie for a younger audience. The contents of the storyline is rather mature, and contains lots of explicit violence and bloodshed, and also nudity.

"The Spine of Night" has a good ensemble of voice actors, with the likes of Lucy Lawless, Richard E. Grant, Patton Oswalt and Larry Fessenden among many others. I especially liked the fact that they had Lucy Lawless to voice the leading role of Tzod, that was just nice.

Visually and in terms of the art style, then "The Spine of Night" does leave for something to be wanted. I mean, the art style and animation is good, but I found it to be a bit crude and could have used with a more artistic touch.

If you enjoy the fantasy genre, then you should give "The Spine of Night" a chance, should you have the opportunity to watch it. I was actually pleasantly surprised with the storyline.

My rating of "The Spine of Night" lands on a six out of ten stars.

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.

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.

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.