The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021)

(Netflix Streaming, July 2022) As someone who’s aware of The Witcher multimedia franchise but still has not read the books, played the games or watched the TV series, I approached standalone animated feature The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf with a blank slate of expectations that would probably confound most fans of that universe. I didn’t care if it was a prequel (“Geralt… hmm, I think that’s an important character later on…”)—I just wanted a decent fantasy adventure. I got mostly that, even though I wasn’t overly bowled over by the results. From the first moments on, as the creature-hunting Witcher hunts down a murderous fantastic creature in the forest, it’s obvious that this series is going for a darker, harder-edged kind of fantasy. The monster is slightly off-beat and quite menacing, while the Witcher’s treatment of the human survivor of the attack is callous and self-serving. Such elements are key to the story that follows, in which the witchers (a generation before Geralt comes by) are up to no good, and their callousness toward normal people is not to their honour. The 2D anime-style western production is a bit on the cheaper side when it comes to animation quality—hardly a surprise, but still a bit of a letdown compared to other slicker animation films. Still, it gets the message across, and occasionally uses 3D animation to make a point. One effective sequence late in the film has the protagonist confronting dreams and nightmares, and the animation steps up to the task. Still, by the end, I wasn’t particularly compelled by the result: The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf is a cash-in derivative product, and even in presenting a distant prequel, it clearly coasts on fan sentiment stoked by other manifestations of the franchise. But maybe it will make more sense after I play the game, read the books or watch the series.