Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno

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Editorial Reviews

Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery! These are the 9 Circles of Hell made famous by Dante Alighieri in his famed masterpiece, Dante’s Inferno, his first story of The Divine Comedy. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic will take you on a harrowing trip through Hell as Dante braves the forces of evil, slaying demons and monsters of extraordinary imagination, all to save his love Beatrice, from the clutches of Hell’s master - Lucifer. The companion piece to the hit Electronic Arts game, Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, is inventively told through eyes of visionary animation directors from around the world, including Shuko Murase (Ergo Proxy) and Yasoumi Umetsu (Kite: Liberator) among others. 6 Directors, 6 terrifying visions of Hell, 1 heart-stopping epic adventure! 6 different covers - 6 different animation styles. See which cover you end up with!



Stills from Dante's Inferno (Click for larger image)




Customer Reviews

Silliness

Reviewed by Scott William Foley, 2010-03-08

Okay, so this is a DVD released in correlation with the video game of the same name. It's important to note that I'm not a gamer and don't even own a video game system. The film borrows from the famous work of literature, The Divine Comedy, which, of course, is the reason I checked it out.

If you give it a watch expecting even a moderate translation of the source material, spare yourself the disappointment. The movie takes great liberties, the dialogue is thick and awkward, and the story is inexplicably difficult to follow.

However, from a purely animation standpoint, it is quite interesting to watch. It has six different directors as they deal with the various levels of Hell, and it was fun to see their interpretations. It got a bit distracting when main characters would shift in appearance from one director to the next, but it wasn't an insurmountable challenge.

But, if you're not into animation, I don't think you'll find much redeeming about this movie. It employs gratuitous violence galore, has some uncomfortable nude scenes (it's a cartoon!), and plays pretty fast and loose with Christian theology. Furthermore, for the most part, though it proclaimed itself an animated epic, it was just plain silly.

~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant


Not your old Dante

Reviewed by Richard Chilson, 2010-03-05

I ordered this DVD out of curiousity, not knowing what it really was. Well, it is not the Divine Comedy. Rather it is based on a game rather than the poem. Dante here is a knight crusader. He is out to save Beatrice who has died and had made a promise to the devil that Dante would be true to her. Otherwise she would lose her soul to Satan. So the knight Dante battles his way through hell - killing everthing in his way. The poetic Inferno supplies the circles of hell and the various tortures as well as the monsters Dante must kill.
It is all done with Asian animation. I don't know if you want to take a 67 year old's advice. Especially since he has read the Divine Comedy four times. Once I shrugged off any reference to Dante I could sit back and enjoy the art. Sure the story sucks. And the dialogue is a wooden as Dante's poetry resembles the music that makes the stars dance.
If you are over 16 you probably won't groove to this film. Will i ever watch it again? No way.

Not what I expected

Reviewed by Robert M, 2010-03-04

This is more of a promo video and a real movie. I guess I didn't know what to expect. It's also not rated so I'm not willing to let me kids see one frame of this"movie".

Disappointing

Reviewed by Brandon J. Smith, 2010-03-04

I have no problem with the bastardization of Dante's Inferno as such. Turning the classic literary work into a rollicking adventure in which Dante tries to rescue Beatrice from Hell would be fine . . . except it's so frequently dull.

Multiple animation studios worked on this, and it's clear that some are much better than others. Many of the images are compelling in and of themselves, but they're not enough to save this movie. In the end, you've got to have a better story. They would have done well to stick more closely to the real Inferno's tale.

I find myself wondering who this would appeal to. This would have had some value as a tool for introducing children to Dante's Inferno, but the extreme violence and nudity does not make this suitable for younger kids. The rest of us should demand more from our entertainment than the occasional cool-looking action sequence.

There's no shortage of great animation out there, plenty of movies worth watching. I'd recommend skipping this one and checking out what else the genre has to offer.

To bad for words

Reviewed by James W. Durney, 2010-03-02

My son, a fan of this type of movie, and I tried to watch this. First, it is NOT the story we all know. Major changes in characters and positioning have been made in this move. These alterations to the story are not improvements. Second, the anamation is late 1980s style and not up to current standards. After about half an hour we turned it off. This is a movie made to sell a game. Think of an extended trailer for the game.