‘The Spine of Night’ Review (Shudder)
Features the voices of: Richard E. Grant, Lucy Lawless, Patton Oswalt, Betty Gabriel, Joe Manganiello, Patrick Breen, Larry Fessenden | Written and Directed by Philip Gelatt, Morgan Galen King
Where are all the adult animated movies? There’s even less when it comes to animated horror movies. There have been a handful of more well-known ones such as the occasional Resident Evil movie, the recent To Your Last Death and prequel to Train To Busan – Seoul Station – but there’s nowhere near enough, so I was very happy to see a new animated horror movie coming to Shudder soon.
The Spine of Night works as a kind of strange anthology movie. We have two lead characters that the story revolves around. The Guardian (voiced by Richard E. Grant) is a creepy, skeleton-like God and Tzod (voiced by Lucy Lawless) a fierce high priestess of a great jungle swamp. They’re both really enjoyable characters for a variety of reasons. I enjoyed both of their stories and why they got to the point of being sworn enemies. But also in look and style they are both excellent and interesting characters. They are linked by a blue flower that also creates a blue flame and can help change the world for good and bad.
I also liked the art style as a whole in the movie. The animation is quite old school – think Metalocalypse – and it absolutely works for this gore-filled movie. Yes it’s simple but it really doesn’t need to be anything else because the characters have plenty of life in them otherwise. There’s some really cool animation, especially with how the blue flower effects things.
The other most colourful element of The Spine of the Night is the blood. It flows through the movie and every time there’s blood it’s a highlight. There are horrible and brutal-looking fight scenes that involve spears making holes through bodies and faces, weapons slicing people’s skulls and stomachs, swords piercing skin and much much more. There’s a lot of it and it never disappoints. My only real complaint is that it doesn’t have the same effect as it does in a live-action movie. Because it is animated, the blood doesn’t feel quite as horrendous as it possibly should. You’d imagine if this was live-action you would have press complaints, people being sick in cinemas, that kind of thing!
Getting some well-known and experienced actors for many of the roles was an excellent choice. It really shows and helps with the quality. Lawless and Grant are especially good but the instantly recognisable voices of Patton Oswalt, Joe Manganiello and Betty Gabriel help immensely too.
The anthology element, with stories shown in flashbacks, doesn’t exactly help with the flow of things and maybe would have been better with more obvious breaks in the stories. There are some moments that suffer from the sheer amount of blood and gore because when that isn’t happening on screen, things aren’t quite as engaging.
The Spine of Night does show that using animation gives you options, especially as slightly lower budget film-makers , to do things that just wouldn’t be possible otherwise and this animated fantasy gore-fest is as bloody and gruesome as you would hope for.
*** 3/5
The Spine of Night will debut on Shudder on March 24th.
