THE SPINE OF NIGHT (2021)

Studio:      Shudder/RLJE Films
Director:    Philip Gelatt, Morgan Galen King
Writer:      Philip Gelatt, Morgan Galen King
Producer:  Will Battersby, Philip Gelatt, Jean Rattle
Stars:     Richard E. Grant, Lucy Lawless, Patton Oswalt, Betty Gabriel, Joe Manganiello, Malcolm Mills, Jordan Douglas Smith

Review Score:

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Summary:

Across centuries of swords, sorcery, and flying machines, a magic flower corrupts mankind with dark desires for supreme power and bloody savagery.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Tzod scales a snowy mountain to reach a cave formed from a massive skull. Inside, Tzod finds the world’s last remaining “bloom,” a blue flower imbued with great magical power.

Armed with a sword, ‘The Guardian’ stops Tzod from taking the flower by claiming mankind is not prepared for the revelations it holds. Tzod points out that the bloom’s power is weakening and says a spore already floated down the mountain to man. Stunned by her statements, The Guardian asks Tzod to explain what happened in the world below while he slumbered.

Tzod recounts how she was queen of a swamp tribe. In the course of expanding his father’s empire, Lord Pyrantin sent soldiers led by the warlord Mongrel to take Tzod’s land. Despite using the bloom’s magic to defend her people from Mongrel’s slaughter, Tzod was captured and taken to the city of Pyre.

Lord Pyrantin summons Ghal-Sur, a librarian from the scholars of the Asher pantheon, to chronicle his subjugation of Tzod. As Pyrantin prepares to whip Tzod, Mongrel tells him about her blue flame. Pyrantin asks to see a demonstration of Tzod’s magic. Tzod summons blue fire that burns Pyrantin’s face. Ghal-Sur steps in to protect Tzod when Mongrel moves to retaliate. Pyrantin has Tzod and Ghal-Sur imprisoned. Pyrantin accuses Mongrel of intentionally allowing Tzod to assault him. Pyrantin takes revenge on Tzod by having his army burn her swamp.

Ghal-Sur convinces Tzod to use the bloom’s power to escape the dungeon. When Pyrantin comes to stop them, Tzod uses magic to disintegrate his horse and drown Pyrantin in mud. Mongrel watches from a distance as Ghal-Sur suddenly stabs Tzod to death to steal her bloom. Tzod’s body sinks into the mud. Ghal-Sur returns to the pantheon while Mongrel becomes Pyre’s new king.

The Guardian questions how Tzod came back to life. Tzod explains that dreams during death showed her what happened next.

After being gone from her fellow scholars for several seasons, Phae-Agura returns to Pyre to find peasants revolting against her order, which now controls the city by hoarding knowledge. A beggar tells Phae-Agura that during her absence, Mongrel’s death left the kingdom without an heir, and starving citizens now war with scholars who subjugate them through illiteracy.

Phae-Agura attends a meeting of scholars where Grand Inquisitor Uruq dismisses concerns about the peasants attempting to burn their books. Uruq also rejects a proposal to educate the commoners as a solution for quelling their uprising.

Phae-Agura shows Uruq that her quest was successful and she retrieved a sacred text hidden in a sunken temple. However, Uruq is unable to decipher the script.

Uruq takes the tome to Ghal-Sur, who is secretly kept prisoner, yet wears a boa of bloom around his neck and feeds on maidens he drains dry of blood to maintain his limited magic. Uruq tells Ghal-Sur he believes the book contains the ritual Ghal-Sur has long sought for unlocking the bloom’s true potential.

Uruq bargains to bring Ghal-Sur what he needs to conduct the ritual in exchange for sharing the bloom’s power. The two men use magic to entrance villagers. The peasants are then drawn into the city where they fight a savage battle against the scholars. As blood flows, Ghal-Sur translates an incantation that summons the blood to form a chrysalis around him. Ghal-Sur emerges transformed and possessed by power. An eye appears in Ghal-Sur’s torso and entrances Uruq too.

Phae-Agura tries calming the insurrectionists by promising to teach them survival and farming. Uruq interrupts. Uruq uses his newfound magic to slaughter the peasants as well as the scholars who try to stop him.

Phae-Agura confronts Uruq over his lust for power. Uruq prepares to kill Phae-Agura when Ghal-Sur recites another spell that creates a giant eye in the sky. The eye emits blue fire that kills Uruq. Ghal-Sur gains increased power.

Tzod tells The Guardian that after he was freed, Ghal-Sur destroyed the pantheon, burned all books, slaughtered the scholars, and used secrets stolen from the bloom to raise an army of disciples. The Guardian continues collapsing as he says he does not wish to hear any more about the pain of the world.

Ghal-Sur’s army continues conquering the land. In one besieged city, an archer fires an arrow that pierces an unnoticed piece of bloom off of Ghal-Sur’s boa. The archer still dies and the city is razed to the ground.

After Ghal-Sur’s army marches on, Gull and his wife Dae emerge from the rubble as the only survivors. Gull finds the piece of bloom. Not knowing what the flower is, the couple puts it into a hearth fire. The resulting blue light momentarily gives them mesmeric visions. Several swordsmen return and kill the couple.

Tzod asks The Guardian to tell her a story. Tzod recounts the legend of mankind’s creation.

During a war between the gods, the head of a decapitated god spilled blood in the sky, filling it with light and darkness. The god’s dying dream summoned his sons to rise. One son dreamt of mankind, which created humans who lived in their shadows.

One man learned the gods were cruel when his lover died and his prayer for her resurrection was rejected. Swearing revenge, this man led a revolt against the gods. He became Seer, The First King of Man. Seer and his army hunted the gods until he finally killed the one who rejected his request. That fallen god’s skull became the cave on the mountain.

One of the king’s men stayed behind and saw the bloom form where the god died. The bloom showed him a vision filled with death and despair for mankind. The man vowed to keep others from experiencing this horrifying revelation by giving man the gift of ignorance. He became the first ‘Guardian’ and killed anyone who tried to retrieve the bloom.

An archer eventually killed the first Guardian. But after seeing the same revelation, he took up the same vow to keep man away from the bloom. The cycle continued until the current Guardian came to the mountain seeking the truth behind the myths of his youth. He also discovered mankind must be protected from the revelation that their existence is meaningless.

Tzod asks why The Guardian did not simply destroy the bloom. The Guardian responds, “Who are we to destroy the mysteries of the night?” But he also claims he would have done it had he known of the war and strife going on below the mountain.

Considering himself a failure, The Guardian tells Tzod to let him and the bloom die. Tzod says no. Tzod takes the bloom and tells him the fate of the world and how she came to find him.

In an age of primitive industry, Ghal-Sur’s forces lay siege to another city where Sparrowcrow, Falconhawk, and Kestrelwren plot to assassinate the supposedly immortal usurper. The three warriors, who wear glider wings and bird masks, stow away aboard a flying machine as it rains fire down on the city’s ramparts.

Sparrowcrow, Falconhawk, and Kestrelwren stealthily slaughter several of the ship’s crew. However, their overthrow attempt results in Falconhawk and Kestrelwren dying and the ship going down in flames.

Sparrowcrow steers the ship into Ghal-Sur’s throne room at the new black pantheon. The burning wreckage scorches Ghal-Sur’s henchmen. While Ghal-Sur uses bloom magic to shield himself, Sparrowcrow takes the opportunity to stab Ghal-Sur. Bloom magic combines with fire and blood to create an enormous explosion that engulfs the chamber.

Liquid from Ghal-Sur’s remaining store of bloom spills into the river below. The water cascades across a canyon until it mixes with the mud containing Tzod’s bones. Tzod returns to life and embarks on her journey up the mountain.

Ghal-Sur emerges from the rubble without any magic. After he sees a blue glow from the mountain, he gathers a group of spearmen and sets off for the skull cave.

Tzod thanks The Guardian for his service as he dies. Ghal-Sur arrives with his men, who fire crossbow bolts into Tzod. Using the last withering bloom, Tzod recites an incantation that resurrects all of the mountain’s past Guardians.

The Guardians destroy Ghal-Sur’s men and tear Ghal-Sur apart. Tzod rips out Ghal-Sur’s blue heart and smashes it. A massive blue light explodes, dissolving Tzod and everyone else into bones. A small rain of new bloom spores then falls over the land below.

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Review:

Compared with my peer group of genre journalists, I think it’s safe to say I tend to be tougher than most. Being difficult to bowl over isn’t a reputation I consciously strive for. I simply see myself as a “call ‘em like I see ‘em” critic. I don’t worry about pleasing PR people as a robotic rah-rah cheerleader regurgitating hive mind hype, or promoting a “shiny happy horror” perspective where all indie efforts deserve unconditional support and bad to mediocre films don’t exist.

The problem this presents is that when I do bestow high praise, positive scores seem to carry significantly more weight than average ratings. It’s like Mikey and Life cereal, for the first of several references anyone under my age range might not relate to. I’ve received feedback before along the lines of, “Wow! If this impressed you, then it has to be a must-see!”

I don’t ever feel like, “Uh-oh. I’d better knock down the number of stars on this one. I don’t want to create a de facto endorsement by implying I enjoyed it too much.” I follow Roger Ebert’s advice. Whenever I waffle between ratings, I err toward the higher one because I’d rather encourage someone to see a movie they end up hating than dissuade anyone from watching something they would have liked.

But I do sometimes feel the need to detail decisions behind higher scores because I award them so infrequently, regular readers may sit up straighter and assign more value than I intend. People will invariably see the same movie, have a completely different reaction, then scold my opposite opinion for leading them astray. That, or they angrily ask, “How can you rate this-or-that higher than so-and-so?!”

This will certainly be the case with “The Spine of Night,” an animated adult adventure into classic fantasy, blood-soaked horror, and surprisingly mature mythology. Everyone’s imaginations obviously aren’t built from the same pieces of popular culture. For those who don’t know the name Ralph Bakshi, “The Spine of Night’s” rotoscoped artwork might appear crude next to today’s techniques. For those who think “Heavy Metal” is only a type of music, they may not have a mind frame that immerses them in this movie.

For anyone reared on the same media as me on the other hand, 95 minutes won’t be nearly enough time to spend touring the film’s fantastic world. Maybe it’s the fact that I never stopped reading Conan the Barbarian comic books. Maybe it’s because I relived the cartoon magic of Don Bluth while replaying “Dragon’s Lair” just last week. But “The Spine of Night” mixes an amazing amalgamation of so many stories and styles that have been integral to my entertainment for 40+ years, I can’t help but be entirely enrapt in its epic.

Right away, “The Spine of Night” stokes flashbacks to Taarna and Red Sonja when a nude warrior woman, Tzod, scales a snowy mountain to reach a cave formed from a giant skull. A golden-masked swordsman guards “the bloom,” the magical blue flower she came for. The guardian warns Tzod that mankind is ill-prepared for the soul-shattering secrets within the plant’s magic. Tzod responds that the bloom already made its way down the mountain, and has been corrupting power-hungry humans for ages.

The guardian can hardly believe Tzod’s claims, so she tells him tales of how the mystic flower turned scholars into necromancers, warriors into warlords, and kings into corpses. Across swampland populated by primitive tribes and besieged castles where flying machines rain fire from the sky, “The Spine of Night” seamlessly weaves a centuries-spanning collection of folklore and legends into one cohesive narrative that’s thoroughly enthralling from the origin of the gods to the final fall of man. With recurring characters connecting each chapter, the film never feels like an anthology, but like a richly realized storybook of shared mythos that has existed for eons.

Hand-rotoscoped animation can be an acquired taste. My brain is fried from a heavy amount of recent writing, so please excuse my inability to mull a less uncouth analogy. If you’re unaccustomed to the style, “The Spine of Night’s” character designs are akin to sketches you might see doodled on the shopping bag cover of a budding young artist’s schoolbook (if students still cover loaned textbooks anymore). That’s not a knock. It’s a key part of the film’s visual appeal.

In addition to obvious influences like Bakshi’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “Fire and Ice,” “The Spine of Night’s” texture throws things back to the more minimalist animation of late ‘70s sci-fi like “The New Adventures of Flash Gordon.” Frames only use as many lines as necessary and let the fiction fill out rest of the fantasy. If a Pixar production is a PlayStation 5, then “The Spine of Night” is a Super Nintendo, which works perfectly for the brands of retro nostalgia the film pulls from.

Brimming with the medieval savagery of limb-lopping battles, occult overtones of dark sorcery, and some nudity, “The Spine of Night” is regularly reminiscent of “Game of Thrones,” Dungeons & Dragons, 1930s pulp fiction, “Excalibur,” and “The Elder Scrolls,” among other works spanning multiple mediums. The movie may echo some of these sources, but it isn’t a mere homage. “The Spine of Night” builds its own distinctly detailed mythology atop a thematic foundation that criticizes class warfare, modernization, weaponizing knowledge as a method of subjugation, and the evils of absolute power. But because filmmakers Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King present their script as a spectacle of high adventure, action, and gore, entertainment value never bends its knee to the morals motivating the stories.

Time being at an increasing premium the older one gets, now more than ever I rarely desire to revisit a modern movie, instead preferring to experience something new. “The Spine of Night” marks the first film in a long time I immediately wanted to watch again to appreciate the multitude of levels it works on: as entertainment, as introspective ideas, and as a touchstone to all the cool comics, cartoons, books, shows, and games that have shaped me since childhood.

Whether they have the same affinities or not, one hopes contemporary audiences similarly appreciate the high concept, wide scope, and deep impact of the tales “The Spine of Night” tells. Philosophically sophisticated, yet fully entrenched in Saturday morning sensations tailored to adult tastes, there hasn’t been anything like “The Spine of Night” in decades.

Review Score: 90

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