The Spine of Night

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.

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.

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.

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 is an rotoscoped animation film containing several stories, all connected by a common thread. The stories are interesting, if not very original, while the drawing is inspired and very violent. However there is one thing that I could not understand: the movements of the characters, especially during fight scenes, were really slow. It took away from the experience. Surely with all technology we have this could have been addressed somehow.

If you watched Heavy Metal you probably will get similar vibes from this movie. It is 40 years later, though, and Spine of Night doesn't bring too much new to the table.

Bottom line: dark fantasy film which will keep you entertained, but not something really memorable.