'The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf' - Movie Review

"The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf" is a Netflix animated spin-off movie cashing in on the success of "The Witcher" TV series. And "cashing in" does seem to be the operative idea: the animation is fairly good, but there's little else good to say about this movie. The writing is poor, the voice acting only slightly better, and they've taken what could have been, was supposed to be, the grand story of Vesemir's origin and the sacking of Kaer Morhen and turned it into an overblown and underwhelming spectacle.

The movie opens with a god-awful song apparently trying to tell us the story, but then it turns out it's a child on screen singing. It was a weird and jarring choice to open the movie. This leads to the introduction of Vesemir (voiced by Theo James), a witcher who's very good at killing monsters ... and mostly in it for the money. If you saw "The Witcher" season 1, you know the name "Vesemir" because he's Geralt of Rivia's beloved mentor. This becomes both Vesemir's origin story (what changed him from "money-grubbing" to teacher) and the story of the destruction of Kaer Morhen (the place where witchers were made, past tense). One thing the movie does do is stick to the overarching theme that humans are worse than monsters ...

This makes "The Witcher" TV series look like great art: I can't recommend it to anyone.