The Spine of Night

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.

No sound track, constantly apathetic, uninspired. The animation is profoundly limited. This is a non-animated film. It's like a child decided to put together broken pieces of an animated movie in discrepancy with that's make any film even remotely good.

From what I've read from IMDb, it took a group of 4 animators 7 years to complete the animated film. In those 7 years, you would have gotten retroscoping to a science. However, the animation isn't great; everything else from the sound design and voice acting are pretty good. I can't complain there. It's reminiscent of Heavy Metal. If you liked Heavy Metal, you'll probably like this film.

While the story is great, the animation style has already been worn out for decades. If this had been produced with more refinement, it could have been epic. Again, it's a wonderful tale and it does the Heavy Metal nostalgia quite well. For me, it just a worn out style of animation. Still worth a watch though.

I had high hopes for this film. The animation is just simply terrible. They attempted to make something similar in vain to Fire and Ice and failed completely. This movie falls flat on it's face right from the beginning. Voice acting was ok but maybe I was so distracted by the abysmal animation that I couldn't judge it properly. The background art was of good quality. I only wish they had found better animators. The film is a good lesson in how not to pay homage to the style of the 1970's fantasy animation genre. This is the most disappointed I have ever been in an animated movie.

Its all in the title. You must watch this film. Its simple story is filled with such beauty and darkness. It must be enjoyed by as many people as possible.