The Spine of Night

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.