Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Based on the comic book of the same name from Mike Mignola and Richard Pace, set atmospherically in 1920’s Gotham City, an ancient evil known as the Lurker on the Threshold awakens and threatens the denizens, and its up to Bruce Wayne and pals to stop it!
So Bruce Wayne (David Giuntoli) has been away from his beloved Gotham for a couple of years, wandering the world with Dick Grayson (James Marsden) while adopting other strays, notably Sanjay “Jay” Tawde (Karan Brar) and Kai Li Cain (Tati Gabrielle). But he keeps his ears to the ground for rumors concerning Gotham, and after hearing of the fiasco that was the Cobblepot Antarctic expedition which of course trailed back to home base, Bruce and the gang head off to find out what went wrong!
This sort of thing is catnip on toast for a Horror, and Batman, fan like me. A large cast of beloved and familiar characters, first the heroic – Bats himself, Dick and Jay and Kai of course, an always-beleaguered Jim Gordon (John DiMaggio), forever snarky Alfred (Brian George), an already-wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon aka a spiritualist version of Oracle (Gideon Adlon), even a cameo from genius Lucius Fox (Tim Russ), and a very different version of a tormented Oliver Queen (Christopher Gorham). And then our familiar beloved villains given a Lovecraftian bent – a truly tragic and utterly hideous version of Two-Face (Patrick Fabian), the twisted-flip irony that is Dr. Kirk Langstrom (Jeffrey Combs), the always-ambitious to the point of occasional sheer idiocy Talia al Ghul (Emily O’Brien) still serving the megalomaniacal plans of her father Ra’s al Ghul (Navid Negahban), a demonic being with questionable motives Jason Blood aka Etrigan (Matthew Waterson), the creature who came to be known as Grendon but was once perhaps Victor Fries (David Dastmalchian), an utterly turned-monstrous Poison Ivy (Gideon Adlon), and the one who possibly began it all, Emperor Penguin himself Oswald Cobblepot (William Salyers).
To say much else would entirely give the joy that is this new Batman animated film away. You don’t have to be a huge Lovecraftian Horror fan to enjoy the eerie settings, unusually quiet Elder-God-style atmosphere, and then onset of utter madness and horrifying physical transformations, but yes it does help. It also helps to be a fairly big Batman fan, knowing these characters before they transform into hideous world-ending abominations is half the fun!
Get infected by the Lurker on the Threshold in the new Batman The Doom That Came to Gotham, out from Warner Bros. now!