Batman: La Malédiction qui s'abattit sur Gotham

The Doom That Came to Gotham is almost a companion piece to Gotham by Gaslight (2018). Here we have a turn-of-the-century Dark Knight investigating a cult who may be trying to summon up ancient forces of evil (spoiler: they are). Forbidden books, vast tentacled monstrosities and madness abound.

Lots of the usual Bat cast are thrown in - some given horrific make-overs, some don't make it to the final credits - and the voice work and animation are all above average. David Giuntuli is a terrifically fierce but impassioned, human Batman - he might be one of the best of the many voice actors in the role. This is a truly dark night for the Dark Knight, who at one point just stands in the Batcave and announces Gotham is doomed over and over again. To the wall.

As much as the movie uses such classic tropes and conventions from HP Lovecraft's stories, the biggest one - the overwhelming sense of unknowable dread - is something that just can't be conjured in a 90 minute animated action adventure. Slow-building tension and increasing unease are something it just doesn't have time for - also the problem with the first Hellboy movie, which Doom That Came to Gotham is very similar to.

However, as an atmospheric period superhero adventure, tinged with nightmarish horror, this is a winner.

This movie tries to be to much like Gotham by Gaslight and it just doesn't work. The story is not very interesting and just throws in random things to introduce characters that reference the comics. Also, this doesn't feel like Batman to me. You could replace Batman with almost any other character and besides some plot changes, the movie would feel the same. Some of this may because this isn't really a Batman story. This isn't a noir or a crime-fighting story. It's about ancient legends and things that usually wouldn't apply to Batman. The animation itself was pretty good but it doesn't make up for a bad script.

A Gotham city set in the 1920's with a steampunk Batman was a great concept and could've made for a great DC animated film but unfortunately it wasn't. I quite enjoyed the 1st act of this movie but near the end of the 2nd act things started falling apart. This movie introduced too many characters too quickly, some that had no real impact on the story and seemed to have been added to please the DC comic fans. There was lots of occultism which is nothing necessarily new in DC animated films but there was an excessive amount that seemed kind of out of place in this movie. To have Batman opt out of his detective logic, using his mind, but instead to resort to magic as a solution for his problems was just odd and unlike Batman. The 3rd act was messy, there was so many villains introduced back to back to bring us one step closer to the final villan which in the end was disappointing and in the final battle something happens which is just once again odd. I can appreciate a different take on a Batman animated film and I loved the time setting but I feel like there's a balance where if you change too many components to a Batman movie where it doesn't really feel like one anymore. This is still worth a watch but will definitely not be in my top Batman animated movies.

If you are a fan of Batman and want to see what this entire universe would be like in the early 1900s, you are in the right place, however, if you want to watch good animation with an incredible script, you are in the wrong place. Throughout the film several characters appear and this is the coolest part of the film. The curiosity to know what the characters are like in this universe is really cool, the problem is that the characters are just thrown into the movie and that ends up making the script worse precisely because it doesn't know what to do with so many characters. The only reason the movie isn't terrible is because of these references, which are really cool to catch, but by the end of the movie, it's already tiring that this happens so much. The film is quite mediocre, at times it is tiring and most of the time the action doesn't work so well. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, just Batman fans who are curious about this type of situation.

When it comes to horror I can be a bit biased due to my love of the genre, but that aside I thought this was really good. While I enjoyed the color grading in Gotham by Gaslight a bit more as it truly invoked that story's era as well as the steampunk vibe it was going for, The Doom That Came to Gotham also looks stellar and the animation as well as the artwork is some of the best

Overall Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham has a solid premise set to a tight pace that never lets up, with fresh takes on both Batman's allies and adversaries and artwork that makes it stand out from the crowd of animated DC films that exist. It's adult themes (and actual life and death consequences) coupled with smart narrative choices makes this worth seeing and as Batman stories go it deserves to sit up high with some of the best we've got from this medium thus far.