The Spine of Night

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source: The Spine of Night

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.

The animation is absolutely amazing and the backgrounds are beautiful. I saw Gorgonaut's EXORDIUM animation 7 years prior to the release of this film and absolutely loved it. However, the terrible voice acting, poorly written dialouge, and god awful sound track were forgivable in that eight minute animation. This film is an absolute slog of eye-rollingly awful dialouge, worse than * quality voice acting, laughable choreagraphy, and a juvenile stereotypical plot. The low budget shows and it is shameful. I was immensely excited for this film and ended up really regretting buying and viewing it. The animator is so talented and I wish that they had a massive budget to support the making of this film because there was so much potential for this to be great, and yet the hour and a half I spent watching it felt like quintuple that amount of time because this was so painful to sit through. There are also incredibly jarring art style choices that felt very strange. There are steam punk and almost sci-fi aspects later on in the movie that feel very out of place. Some of the weapons are comically oversized or oddly shaped for no apparent reason. Very often there will be characters who are fully * in environments where they would die within an hour due to hypothermia and things such as. I would recommend that you watch EXORDIUM before purchasing or veiwing this film. If you enjoy it then imagine EXORDIUM but everything about it is ten times worse except for the animation and it is twelve times the length of EXORDIUM, that is what this movie is. I wish the animator the best but all of the actors excluding Richard E. Grant ruined this movie.

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.

A visual spectacular of violence and medieval psychedelia. Love it! Thank you entertainment gods for this raw, unfiltered, masterpiece in a time of boring, p.c., blah...This film is amazing!

I love Lucy Lawless. She didn't even try. Bad writing, terrible story, just crap. I'm not sure why all of the great reviews, I couldn't get past 20 minutes. Don't waste your time unless you like sci-fi garbage.

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.