The Witch­er: Night­mare of the Wolf

A new ​“ani­mé” film from Net­flix (a term they’ve thrown around with some gen­eros­i­ty), The Witch­er: Night­mare of the Wolf feels like con­fir­ma­tion of an excit­ing niche the stream­ing ser­vice has carved out in the realm of ani­ma­tion, mix­ing adult themes and genre thrills. Despite being dubbed an ani­mé, pro­duc­ers Stu­dio Mir are best known for their Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion work, hav­ing made their name with the Avatar sequel The Leg­end of Korra.

With that series, Mir more than proved their chops for cre­at­ing com­pelling fan­ta­sy action ground­ed in believ­able but nonethe­less won­drous move­ment. Direct­ed by Han Kwang-Il, the film is set in the same fic­tion­al set­ting as the live-action The Witch­er (showrun­ner Lau­ren Schmidt serves as pro­duc­er here), in turn based on the books by Andrzej Sap­kows­ki. Set before the time of Hen­ry Cavill’s Ger­alt, Night­mare of the Wolf fol­lows the youth­ful adven­tures of his senior, Vesemir, who car­ries him­self with more author­i­ty and is always ready with a quip.

Like the show, lots of myth­ic prop­er nouns being thrown around might inspire some view­ers who are unfa­mil­iar with the medieval dark fan­ta­sy world of the books, game or series to keep the cap­tions turned on. But screen­writer Beau DeMayo does well to keep audi­ences ori­en­tat­ed through (if not nec­es­sar­i­ly inter­est­ed in) the dif­fer­ent threads of intrigue, keep­ing things firm­ly based in the racial ten­sions between humans, elves and witchers.

At the same time, we wit­ness the tragedies and regrets of Vesemir’s past, his youth­ful ambi­tion set­ting him on the path to free­lance mon­ster hunt­ing. In the present day, Vesemir comes up against a mage who uses the killings of the film’s bru­tal open­ing as fod­der for her fear-mon­ger­ing cam­paign against witch­ers. Not that it’s com­plete­ly unfound­ed – Han also details the hor­rif­ic rites of pas­sage that makes witch­ers, an inhu­mane series of tests that few sur­vive. It’s all in ser­vice of fair­ly straight­for­ward themes of humanity’s ten­den­cies towards intol­er­ance, build­ing towards an inevitable conflict.

From the jump the film is hor­rif­i­cal­ly bloody. No soon­er are we intro­duced to a fam­i­ly of trav­ellers in the open­ing scene than they are ruth­less­ly torn to pieces by a trans­form­ing mon­ster – a ​‘lesh­en’ – lurk­ing in the woods. It turns from hor­ror to won­drous action as Vesemir steps in, dis­patch­ing the crea­ture with a dynam­ic onslaught of sword­play and mag­ic. Dis­mem­ber­ment is treat­ed remark­ably grace­ful­ly here, the char­ac­ters twirling and glid­ing through each lay­out. The ani­ma­tors con­sis­tent­ly find inter­est­ing angles from which to frame the spec­ta­cle, even in the first per­son. This extends to the more mun­dane moments, viewed with equal detail and expressivity.

When it comes to the land­scapes them­selves, how­ev­er, Night­mare of the Wolf is not the most excit­ing show­case of the geog­ra­phy of this world. Much of it comes across as fair­ly gener­ic medieval fan­ta­sy, which isn’t helped by some flat light­ing and an over­bear­ing sound­track of wail­ing singers. The bod­ies in motion are the film’s main draw, and between the flour­ish­es of action, Han homes in on detailed close-ups which keep the vio­lence from feel­ing over­bear­ing even as Vesemir him­self becomes numb to it.

In con­trast to his more cyn­i­cal witch­er peer, Vesemir’s ide­al­ism rein­forces his sta­tus as the unfor­tu­nate moral com­pass at the cen­tre of a moral­ly ambigu­ous con­flict. The series may be mis­an­throp­ic in tone, but its main char­ac­ter retains some hope that things can be fixed with rea­son. Despite this, Night­mare of the Wolf often feels as slight as the show that pre­ced­ed it, even though it offers more depth and his­tor­i­cal detail to their shared set­ting. It’s sim­ply more inter­est­ed in the mon­ster-slay­ing, and when it moves as well as this does, who can blame it?