by Ed Fortune
The steadily expanding Warhammer 40,000 setting has enough factions and spin-offs to fill a whole galaxy. One of the more interesting elements is The Holy Order of the Emperor’s Inquisition, an organisation of galaxy-spanning ‘space cops’ who have absolute authority over humanity. Which are perfect for gritty detective dramas that feature Gothic space drama as well as weird space crime.
Interrogator Final Cut is a feature-length animated picture available via the Warhammer+, Games Workshop’s lifestyle subscription service offering. It tells the tale of Jurgen, a man cursed with psychic visions. His dubious gift works as a nightmarish clue detector. Bad luck and betrayal have sent Jurgen to the bottom of a bottle. Jurgen once worked for the Inquisition, but his boss was murdered, and between freelance detective jobs, he searches for the killer. He isn’t very good at this, however, and gets beaten up an awful lot for his troubles.
This being Warhammer 40,000, the entire thing is set on a Hive World; a planet-wide city where people are crammed in on top of each other into impossible spire-like sky-scrapers. Animated in gothic black and white, this is cel-style animation similar to Warhammer+’s other show, Hammer and Bolter. The style choices fit the world perfectly and also happen to be budget-friendly.
Phillip Sacremento brings an appropriately gritty rumble to the role of Jurgen. In fact, the voice acting is solid throughout, and it seems that the creative team behind these productions are slowly but surely assembling a cast of regular and reliable talent. (Though it would be nice to know who’s writing what with these productions). It’s a nice, gritty detective tale, and it’s the sort of thing Warhammer 40,000 does very well. Given that the backdrop is a failing inter-solar totalitarian state, stories about broken people trying to use a broken system to fix irredeemably ruined lives fit perfectly.
There’s just enough violence and existential Grim Dark horror to keep this engaging throughout. It would fascinating to see what this sort of tale would look like in live-action, but the animated version does the job very well for now.
Johnathan Hartman’s claustrophobic soundtrack slams home the horrific, dark city vibe to the entire production. The show is available as nine separate shorts or one almost two-hour movie. We advise swallowing the whole thing in one session (though with perhaps a mid-way break) because the pacing is pretty even throughout, and chopping up the tale disrupts the various twists and turns of this sci-fi noir tale.
Overall, a good example of bad things happening to terrible people in the Grim Darkness of the 41st millennium.
